


Imperfect

by HopeForTheWitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Human!Fawkes, Human!Hedwig, I've been told, Inspired by Sword Art Online, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Modern AU, Unreliable Narrator, Video Game Mechanics, there are a lot of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27011575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeForTheWitch/pseuds/HopeForTheWitch
Summary: ADJECTIVE1. not perfect; faulty or incomplete.“an imperfect grasp of English”2.grammar(of a tense) denoting a past action in progress but not completed at the time in question.When Harry gets stuck in Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets, a game developed by Riddle Games Corp and published by Hog’s Head, all he wants is to be left alone and survive. Sadly for him, things don’t work out that way. Old school rivals, friends, almost-lovers, insistent birds, lootboxes, and certain death lurking around every corner in a game that turns the tides against them with every update; there is no time for rest in H:CoS.Inspired by Sword Art Online.
Relationships: Brief Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter - Relationship, Fawkes/Harry Potter, Past Sirius Black/Harry Potter
Comments: 27
Kudos: 28





	1. Episode 0.5

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic in 2015, in a different fandom. I joined a fantastic discord server a few months ago, and ever since have been pushing myself to finish this fic. It finally happened! So, I can post now without feeling guilty :) I'm uploading it as I get it back from my beta, but there's no set schedule. Beta is done when they're done, so just know that it _is_ finished and sitting at a little under ~52k.
> 
> I would like to once more say that Drarry is brief (the tags should tell you, but who knows, perhaps you skipped over that part).
> 
> Edit:  
> I used the map for Black Desert Online and used some of the mechanics, definitely not all, to build on. So for a map of the world, be sure to check <http://www.somethinglovely.net/bdo/>.
> 
> Many thanks to [Faelyee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faelyee/works) for beta'ing! <3

Ginny bounces in through the backdoor, lollipop in hand. 

“You guys!” she shouts gleefully. “It’s confirmed! I can talk now!” She gives a wordless squeal, stretching her arms out with obvious joy. It’s catching.

Lily looks amused while Harry grins back. He knows there was something in the works that she wasn’t allowed to talk about, something to do with the game she plays professionally. 

“Oh, yeah?” he asks curiously. “Is there a press release?”

Ginny waves that away with her lollipop. “Tomorrow, but management has allowed us to talk about it with our families.” She sits herself down on the soft yellow sofa between mother and son. “And since you’re my family, well.” She shimmies her shoulders. “Guess what, Aunt Lily.”

“What?” Lily asks with an indulgent smile.

Ginny beams at her. “In six months there’s a new game coming out based on the Quidditch setting.” She stamps her feet with joy, shaking the sofa. “It’s VR, and it’ll debut with the NerveGear everyone’s been talking about.”

“What’s it called?”

His old neighbour takes a deep breath. “Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets. I swear to god, Harry, it’s so cool. It’s gonna be in beta next month, for two months. You know that castle you see in the background all the time?”

Harry gives her a winning smile. “I wouldn’t know, I’m always too busy watching you destroy your opponents,” he says charmingly.

She hits his shoulder with a flat hand. “Oh, stop.”

“Yes, I know the castle.” Of course he does. He plays Quidditch himself, just not professionally like Ginny. He’s flown around the castle often enough in search of the snitch. “What about it?”

“It’s going to be set in a dungeon! You’re going to play with me, aren’t you? You have to, you and Ron both. It’s going to be awesome. Plus, management seems to think it’s good PR for the team to stream launch day.”

Harry grimaces. “Launch day is never good PR.”

Ginny snort-laughs in reply.

“I thought NerveGear was going to be extremely expensive,” Lily says slowly.

The girl deflates a little. “Yeah, I know. I don’t know if I can get any extras, but I’m going to try. I know my other brothers aren’t interested, so there’s that.”

“Charlie might,” Harry offers, but he knows the man is too busy with family and work to bother with games. He manages to tune in to Ginny’s tournaments sometimes, but that’s about the extent of it. “What about the twins?”

“They’re too busy with Uni.”

“In six months it’ll be summer,” Harry says.

Ginny hums. “True enough,” she concedes. “I doubt they’ll pick it up, though. I’ll try to see if I can get you and Ron one, but getting them one too?”

* * *

In the end, Ginny only manages to get one free of charge. Aside from her own, which is paid for by her sponsors, but she can get them a nice discount. Sirius, who gets word of this, insists on paying for them, and so two identical boxes get delivered to Harry and Ron’s flat while they’re on a weekend trip to Spain. 

They stow the boxes, unopened, into a closet and forget all about them until Ginny visits to show off the champion trophy after the Quidditch World Cup ends. He gives Ginny a congratulatory kiss that has her laughing and ducking out from his hug while she rolls her eyes. He spends some time admiring the cup while Ginny hunts down the boxes to inspect their NerveGear. 

It’s Ginny’s turn with the trophy for a week, and the redhead takes it wherever she goes. There are pictures flooding the internet of her at a restaurant with the trophy sitting in its own seat. It’s her second year as a professional Seeker, and it’s a bit of a miracle she made the national team at all. Ron figures she’s just that good, and it’s true, although he also insists that Harry would have made it on any pro team, had he wanted to. 

“Don’t forget to register!” she tells them sternly before she climbs into her car.

* * *

Username: RedNGold

Password: fuckyeahworldcup

_Error: your password must be between 8 and 16 characters and must contain at least one uppercase character [A-Z], one digit [0-9] and one special character [~!@#$%^ &*_-+=] _

Password: fuckY3ah

_Error: your password must be between 8 and 16 characters and must contain at least one uppercase character [A-Z], one digit [0-9] and one special character [~!@#$%^ &*_-+=] _

Password: fuckTh1s-

_Registration complete. Welcome to Sword Arts Online,_ RedNGold _!_

_Countdown until launch: 22 Days 11 Hours 43 Minutes 9 Seconds_

* * *

Username: RedNGold

Password: fuckTh1s_

_Invalid password. Please enter the correct password to continue._

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

* * *

Ginny looks chagrined, sprawled over Ron and Harry’s worn sofa. She’s a frequent visitor, and likes to stay over whenever she can. Her parents are stifling, or so she claims. Harry loves his almost-sister, he truly does, but sometimes he wonders why she doesn’t just move out if she’s always butting heads with her mum this much.

“They want me to stream launch day,” Ginny confirms. “It’s only for the first couple days, we can play together afterwards if you don’t want to be in it.”

Harry shrugs. He’s been in her Quidditch streams before, has been briefed on what not to do before, and he isn’t going to start caring about appearing on a H:CoS stream now. 

“It’s fine,” he replies.

Ron’s more the one who gets nervous about people watching them. He also gets upset about the rubbish people say to his little sister solely because she’s a woman playing Quidditch on a professional level. Jealous snots, but that’s a different thing altogether.

“Have you registered yet?”

“Of course,” Harry says immediately. He has, he just had a bit of trouble remembering his password, that’s all. “I’m RedNGold.”

“That’s just your login name though, that’s not going to be your IGN,” Ginny tells him. “We can only create those once we’re actually in.”

“If we even get in on the first day.”

“Streaming loading screens is going to be the easiest money I’ll ever make,” Ginny says with a bit of a smirk. “You know, their servers are in the UK, our ping’s going to be insane."


	2. Episode 1

Unlocked: 1

Location: Olvia, Balenos

Server: Balenos 3

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 1

Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets is exactly as magical as Harry pictured it whenever he played Quidditch. They’re vastly different games. Quidditch has more of a sports feel to it while H:CoS is clearly an MMORPG. He can’t see the castle from where he's at, but it’s shown in the backdrop of the server lobby and it looks majestic even from a distance. It all looks so realistic, he thinks as he glances around.

Despite the well-known scenery of the region of Balenos, it feels very different to be walking around the realistically scaled buildings. The spawning area is a dirt path next to a sprawling farm, and it’s crowded with more players arriving every few seconds. If he doesn’t want to get crushed, he has to get a move on.

Figuring how to move within this virtual environment takes him longer than he’d care to admit, which might also be why there are so many people stuck at spawn. Soon, however, he’s shuffling away from the hedge he started in front of and toward the buildings in the west. 

The crowd pulls him along like a wave, surrounding him with a sea of different languages. He picks up a few mangled English words that have to do with gaming, but other than that he doesn’t hear other native English speakers.

There’s a lot of German and what sounds like Eastern European languages, maybe even Russian, and he’s reminded of the fact that EU shares their servers with Russia despite protests from both sides; EU players were convinced Russian players had a different play-style, a different attitude, and for Russians it meant they were forced to pay EU, thus NA, prices.

Hog’s Head, the publishing company behind H:CoS and Quidditch, promised a compromise, which got them in trouble with Riddle Games Corp., the developers of both games, because, well, they didn’t _want_ to. It was unfortunate timing for Hog’s, because their contract was up in half a year. 

There were tons of rumours flying around that Hog’s was going to get dropped in favour of another company, although nobody could figure out who. After a lot of backlash, RGC relented and agreed on a different store for Russia, at which point the Baltic region got narked off because what about _them_?

Ginny hasn’t updated him about the situation for a while, but from what he understands it’s a right mess, not quite the kind of PR the companies had been hoping for.

The crowd thins out the further they go along the dirt paths, streams of people weaving in and out of the buildings until he is forcefully stopped in front of a set of market stalls. Many disappear, either disconnecting or hopping to another server. Harry thinks about changing servers himself but decides to stick to Balenos 3 for now.

He suspects that if he’d taken the time to read the short user manual, all the different symbols popping up on his screen’s mini-map would have meant something to him. As it is, they aren’t what he’s used to from the other fantasy games the youngest Weasleys, but mostly Ron, forced upon him. 

He considers entering the next building he passes, probably an inn of some sort if he reads the sign right, but discards that idea almost immediately, deciding to duck into an alley until most of the crowd has dissipated, however long that takes.

Harry ends up climbing a roof, although how he manages that he doesn’t quite know, movements still clunky. Now able to observe in peace, he notes he’s not the only one waddling around. He grins when he spots a man raising his knees all the way up to his pelvis with every step, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what Harry has been doing, which is not to raise his feet at all and hope for the best.

Upon further inspection, he seriously doubts all the people walking around are adults despite their generic looking avatars. 

“Ti sei perso?” 

Harry spins around in surprise and comes face to face with a man—perhaps not a man but a boy, but he couldn’t tell—who by the looks of it has already done some exploring, if the weapon hanging off his belt is any indication. He tries not to stare. “Pardon?”

“Inglese?” he asks, visibly brightening. “English? I asked if you were lost.”

Ah. It’s instinct to claim that he isn’t, but really, he had been banking on Ginny being here to chatter him through every step. She knows this game like the back of her hand, spent hundreds of hours playing the beta when it came out, following the news like a hawk. She was not above trying to gain insider knowledge either; she has some connections that she wasn’t afraid to utilise. 

Ginny likes showing off whenever it turns out that she knows more about a topic than Harry (or Ron) and he tends to indulge her when that happens. He regrets relying on that now, although perhaps it’s also on him and his stubborn streak because he refuses to log out just to reconnect to Discord so he can ask her questions. Maybe she’s still stuck in the lobby.

Sending either of the Weasley siblings a message is out of the question, because they haven’t been able to exchange usernames yet, their Discord conversation cut short when there was a mass disconnect a few seconds before Harry suddenly found himself in-game and able to create a character.

“Yeah, I am,” Harry confesses, startling a little at the unfamiliar sound of his voice.

“Want help?” The man makes an annoyed _tsk_ sound, looking around him and down at the busy streets below. “Let’s hop servers first, it’s way too crowded here.”

So much for sticking to Balenos 3, then. He’ll find Ron and Ginny later.

* * *

Unlocked: 1

Location: Olvia, Balenos

Server: Serendia 9

**Party**

Gavino LV. 4

RedNGold LV. 1

The man turns out to be a boy, and he introduces himself as Gavino. Harry soon learns he is highly enthusiastic about H:CoS, and he’s full of stories from his time as a beta-tester.

“Don’t think about walking,” Gavino advises with only a hint of an Italian accent while he leads the way to some hole-in-the-wall NPC shop. “Just walk. In real life you don’t think about walking either.” He nods to himself, as if satisfied by that description. “When we get to the plains, I’ll show you something that’ll help, ‘cause you’re too… aware?” He hums. “You’re too _aware_ of your body now,” he says sagely.

Plains sounds about right. Olvia is in a hilly area, but further down to the south are fields of vibrant green grass spread out as far as the eye can see, currently getting trampled by the stampede of people hurrying through the early quests. He can’t see any mobs yet, but when he gets down there too, there’s a fair chance he’ll run into them.

Harry can only listen with half an ear, however, as he has to concentrate on making sure he’s following the correct person. All the surrounding avatars look so generic, only a handful of hairstyles despite the unnatural colours, that the only way he can be sure it’s Gavino he’s following is the steady stream of chatter he keeps up.

Gavino slips through another alley crammed in between the space of two market stalls. There’s an arched door at the end, but it’s so narrow that Harry takes one look at it and sighs in dismay. Gavino might be built for archways like that, but Harry isn’t, not even in-game. He’s prepared to offer to wait outside, not willing to go through getting stuck between two walls of all things, but Gavino grabs his sleeve with a severe frown on his face and pulls him through.

“No, seriously, I’m fine, I’ll just—” Harry breaks off in a moment of disconnect and he stumbles and falls, because the last time he managed to fit through a narrow space like that was years ago and the memory still haunts him. 

Dazed, he climbs to his feet. 

“I did not see that coming,” Harry admits, and someone laughs, although it doesn’t sound unkind.

At first Harry thinks it’s the NPC behind the till, but there’s another person leaning against the counter. He gets a small wave when the person sees he’s been noticed. 

“So I guess it’s too late to pretend that didn’t happen,” Harry says, hoping the other understands English.

“No,” the person chuckles, and he sounds like an Englishman, brilliant. “It’s okay, happened to me too. I thought I had to duck, but no need.” He grins. “You’re—er— _big_ in real life?” He spreads his arms out. As if the question itself wasn’t obvious enough.

“No, just not twelve,” Harry says. “You’re from the UK, I take it?”

The other person doesn’t get to do more than nod before Gavino jumps in with, “the UK, _really_?” Then he seems to remember himself and clears his throat, calming down. “That’s cool,” he says. “I’m Gavino, can I add you?” 

Despite his appearance, he sounds so young.

“Cool?” Harry mutters. “ _I_ ’m from the UK.” 

But Gavino isn’t paying attention.

“Nightmare, pleased to meet you,” the person says with no small amount of amusement. “Do you like meeting new people?”

“Ew, no, not in real life,” Gavino replies immediately, and he sounds as disgusted by the idea as his face would suggest, “but I like having online friends. Then, if you don’t want to talk, you just go offline so they can’t bother you.”

“That’s not very nice. What if _they_ want to talk?” Nightmare asks.

Gavino only shrugs and says, “Too bad?”

Harry has to hide a grin. He spies another person inching closer to the shelves near the door where crystal phials in a variety of colours are sorted into racks. 

Curious, Harry comes over, leaving Gavino and Nightmare to their bonding. “What are these?”

The person grabs a pink one and hands it over. As soon as Harry’s fingers close around the thin scarlet phial, information appears in his field of vision, an opaque screen with gigantic lettering. The vendor price is listed at the bottom, along with the amount of galleons, sickles and knuts in his possession, a nice little zero.

_HP POTION (SMALL)_

_Consumable_

_— Description:_

_An ordinary HP potion._

_— Effect:_

_HP +75_

_Duration: Instant_

_Cooldown: 3 sec_

_Usage:_

_Use Alchemy to combine HP Potion (Small) x3 into HP Potion (Medium)._

  
  


Losing a fourth of his field of vision to his health bar is one thing, but this is just ridiculous.

“Okay, how do I make this info screen go away?” Harry asks, trying to see if he can see some kind of red button in the top corners, but the display follows his gaze, obscuring everything except for a small border along the edge of vision.

“You put the object back,” the other person drawls.

“I would, thank you, but I can’t _see_ ,” Harry says.

“Oh!” He makes a thoughtful hum. “I had that too.” 

He pries the phial out of Harry’s hand, which thank god makes the display go away. 

“Okay, now open your menu and go to settings. Jesus, it’s the—the white circle on your right. Oh my god, you swipe—look, it’s like a lock screen on your phone, you swipe down. Like _this_.” 

He makes some complicated-looking motions with his hands, but Harry’s too busy looking for the circle he’s talking about.

It turns out it’s on the back of his left wrist, a large white dot that feels a bit squishy when he pushes it with the tip of his right middle finger. He swipes up to his elbow, unsure when to stop, and the dot follows his finger. It wiggles and jumps back when he lets go and the menu opens.

It’s a screen with all different icons that block his vision, most that Harry doesn’t recognise but is sure will learn the meaning of once he gets into the game. For now he looks for a gear icon, or something similar and finds it in the bottom left. He feels daft reaching up into the air, considering nobody else can see his menu, but reminds himself that others are dealing with that same issue, and nobody is giving them odd looks.

A list of options floats in front of him.

He scrolls all the way down until he finds the display options, bypassing everything else for now, despite seeing some interesting sections along the way. A sliding bar appears, the slider almost all the way to the right, which explains the size of the screens. Harry pushes it to the left until the letters in the test field are easily readable but no longer intrusive. It has reduced the status bar in the top left corner to almost a fifth of what it was before.

Perfect.

* * *

Gavino insists on Nightmare joining them, but the man—Harry assumes it’s an adult behind the avatar anyway—begs off. 

“I’m waiting for friends,” Nightmare says, patting Gavino on the head. “They’re late, but I’m sure they’ll come. I just need to wait a little longer.”

Harry wryly thinks he should’ve made such agreements with _his_ friends before jumping in-game. Hell, he doesn’t even know their usernames, not even a hint. They’re never going to find each other. It’s going to be a, well, utter _nightmare_.

* * *

Unlocked: 1

Location: Olvia, Balenos

Server: Serendia 9

**Party**

Gavino LV. 4

Enzio LV. 2

RedNGold LV. 1

Harry walks away from the general store with a Beginner’s Box and a third person in his party. The box has a kuku bird pet, which he hears is a necessity for its auto-looting. 

He can imagine his parents bickering about that, his father firmly in the Pay to Win camp while his mum argues in favour of Pay for Convenience. They have yet to agree on a game being one way or the other, and he doubts H:CoS is going to be the first.

The Beginner’s Box also comes with a lootbox that Harry refuses to open out of principle. He doesn’t care how far it sets him behind, he tells the two boys he’s walking around with, he refuses to participate and get his hopes up. 

“They don’t even tell you percentages,” Harry grouses.

“It could be something valuable!” Gavino grinds out.

“It could be utter shite,” Harry replies with a shrug.

“We get one every month, you know,” the third person says, someone who introduced himself as Enzio. “You’ll miss out on so much, you can get boss gear from them.”

Harry waits with his questions until they’re on the roof of a trading stall. There’s a little girl NPC sitting in front of the stall, whistling to herself. According to her dialogue she shouldn’t be a child, but she doesn’t look a day older than eight and Harry can’t help but get unnerved by her _supposed_ age; that’s a flimsy excuse if he ever heard one.

“What do you mean, boss gear?”

“Literally gear from bosses,” Enzio says. “They spawn every day in special places and you go with a group and kill them and sometimes they drop gear.” 

“Only armour, though,” Gavino adds. “The good weapons are player-made.” He shrugs. “They gave us extra stuff during the beta to speed things up but none of it works anymore. Anyway, you should open your box, I wanna see what you’ll get.”

“Me too!”

Harry sighs, still not convinced, but decides it’s not harmful to open it. He opens his inventory by making a small circular wave of his right fingers, a shortcut he set not fifteen minutes ago because going into the menu every time is tedious. 

“Fine,” he says, and the boys, for they can’t be anything but _boys_ , give a cheer.

He activates the box, and a single slot reel appears. He waits it out patiently, then gives a laugh when he sees what he got. 

_Invisibility Cloak_

_Disabled_

_— Effect:_

_N/A_

_Duration: 10 minutes_

_Cooldown: 1 day_

“You got Memory Shards, didn’t you?” Gavino asks with a knowing look.

Harry takes the cloak out of his inventory to show the boys. It’s royal blue with a white triangle on the back and a trail of glittering rainbow sequins down the middle—if not for that stripe, it’d look decent but as it is, it looks hideous. 

“It’s an invisibility cloak,” he says.

“I’d wanna be invisible too if I wore that,” Enzio mutters.

Harry grins. He tries to drop the item to make room in his cramped inventory, but the game informs him it’s a _special item_ and you can’t delete it.

Great, now he’s stuck with it.

The inside, at least, is crimson with no sign of the triangle or the sequins, so he ends up turning it inside out and wearing it that way. It falls down to his ankles and the hood, when drawn, covers half his face.

“Better,” is the verdict from the boys.

* * *

They bite the bullet and follow the quests. The first few missions take them through the town of Olvia, with its dusty roads and it sand-coloured bricks. Before they leave town, they end up at a stable, being told about horses but unable to purchase one yet. Enzio tells him that the world is very large and horses are a must once they get past Balenos, the first region.

The quests take them into the grassy area to the south of Olvia, where they are required to kill foxes, wolves, and then goblins. 

“Keep everything you get,” Gavino advises him. 

That’s hard to do with only sixteen inventory slots to start with. At least the useless cloak goes into a costume slot when he wears it, which frees up that slot.

Is he really going to do this?

Harry grimaces at himself, silently apologising to his father for betraying him this way, and then he opens the premium store. _Pay for Convenience_ his arse, he’ll have words with his mother. It’s hardly convenient if the game itself inconveniences you.

It seems ridiculous that he’s been in the game for less than two hours and already feels the need to spend, but that’s its business model. Besides, Ginny will not allow him or Ron to quit on her, so he suspects he’ll be playing until she gets bored or finds a group of friends.

It’s not like he doesn’t have the money, it’s the principle of the thing.

“Are you going to spend?” Enzio chirps.

“I might,” Harry says warily, “why?”

“You should get more pets! You can have four, and you need them,” Enzio instructs.

“And clothes, they give you a small buff. It’s not a lot, so you don’t need to have them, but you probably should anyway.”

“Oh! And warehouse s—”

“Jesus,” Harry mutters, tuning the boys out, “I just wanted inventory space.” 

Three pets, a costume and a few inventory upgrades later, they’re on their way again. Somehow, in the span of two hours, Harry has found himself adopted by an enthusiastic Italian thirteen year-old and a slightly more reserved sixteen year-old German. They’re not his family or friends, but that’s okay.

* * *

Unlocked: 1

Location: Wolf Hills, Balenos

Server: Serendia 9

**Party**

Gavino LV. 6

RedNGold LV. 4

Enzio LV. 3

Except that things are not okay, as it turns out. 

Gavino is the first to notice it. They’re seated near the area marker in the grass, taking a break when they realise their Beginner’s Box comes with special meals that give them buffed stats. Harry sits cross-legged with his back against a tree, his cloak in his lap.

Enzio is fiddling with something on his screen, Harry can only guess he’s adjusting his settings if the small motions of his hands are any indication. Apparently you need not make wide gestures for the game to understand what you want to do, because you can set shortcuts to the menus you wish to have quick access to.

Gavino makes a soft, wounded sound and says, “Gold, can you log out?”

Harry blinks, then tries. Swallows thickly when he can’t find a log out button, sees only the expected server icon. He presses it, and he sees the lobby. It’s empty, only showing him a long list of servers.

The announcement comes not long after, in the form of a system message.

_Hello adventurers,_

_Welcome to Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets._

_By now you must have noticed you can’t log out._

_Don’t worry, this is completely intentional..._

The message is almost _cheerful_ as it explains their situation; they’re stuck until they manage to defeat a level 100 basilisk down in the Chamber of Secrets, a dungeon of sorts. They’re stuck until they kill it or until it kills _them._

The words sit heavy in his chest and he feels lightheaded.

One thing he’s glad of is that Ron and Ginny’s NerveGears were acting up when he last spoke to them, and he hopes that they haven’t been able to get in, that they at least are safe on the outside. The relief is substantial enough that he feels he would cry right now if that were at all possible in this game. It’s not. Instead, he tries to console two terrified teenagers who want to go home and can’t. 

He tries not to think about the fact that he’s right there with them.

Harry is suddenly very conscious of how they’re currently _not_ in a safe-zone. The roads are supposedly part of the green-zone, the safe-zone, but he turns on his border view, anyway. Thick lines in several colours spread out all around him, the ground beneath his feet cast in a red light. Further ahead, however, where the dirt road goes around a group of enormous boulders, it’s green.

He herds them toward it, breathes a little easier when they’re standing on the road. He directs them back to the outskirts of Olvia, the teens trailing silently behind him. The sun has set by now, but H:CoS has seasons just like the real world, and it’s mid-summer, the weather very mild.

It shouldn’t be too uncomfortable to sleep outside. He keeps them well within the green glowing boundaries of the safe-zone, he doesn’t want to risk it until they know more. 

Olvia is utter chaos.

That night, sharing a rooftop with a handful of other players, Harry learns there is no such thing as sleep within H:CoS. There is something called _resting_ , and that needs to be enough.

His head buzzes.

* * *

Unlocked: 1

Location: Velia, Balenos

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 11

Gavino LV. 9

Enzio LV. 7

A week in, the dust had yet to settle. 

Already there was a growing gap between three sorts of players; those who wanted nothing to do with the front lines, those fighting on the front lines, and those who wanted to help but not fight. Most belonging to the former group didn’t explore further than Western Guard Camp, a guard post located right between Olvia and Velia, the latter being the capital of the Balenos region.

Hogwarts Castle is in the North-East of Velia*, accompanied by Hogsmeade. Harry has yet to visit, it’s on his to-do list, but those who already explored the area come back with tales of difficult monsters and a higher level requirement than what the average fighting player has now.

The mobs that spawn in the grassy areas around Velia and its five farms are mostly Steel Imps to the west, Forest Tree Spirits to the south and Goblins to the east, with some non-aggressive mobs that are great for resource gathering. 

As they travel further north, the stronger the aggressive mobs become. However, the site of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade is surrounded by NPC soldiers that they have to mow down every time they wish to go near.

The next region holds more appropriate mobs for Harry to kill, but their spawn sites are overrun by other players and Harry isn’t keen on fighting them for a grinding rotation. What he does instead is kill as many Forest Tree Spirits as he can find until their cursor dulls from an angry red to a washed out grey. While his levels may not be going up quickly being joined with mobs below his level, it’s still good skill EXP. He may not be gaining a ton of levels, but his skill points are looking great compared to the players fighting over killing Heidel Quarry Imps in the next region.

Harry feels cheated that his body doesn’t reflect how much he’s been working out, feeling physically tired at the end of a long day of grinding mobs and gathering resources until his inventory is screaming at him in protest, at which point he takes care of his repeatable _Contribution Point_ quests.

Everyone’s stuck with the body they had the day they got trapped in here. Harry can’t complain, he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with his body, but it’s the thought that counts, it’s a little unfair.

* * *

“I don’t like fighting,” Gavino says in the morning, throwing down his cutlass in the grass and collapsing in a cross-legged position. He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “I never fight in these games, I’m always the one collecting resources.”

Enzio rolls his eyes. He and Gavino have become fast friends in this godforsaken world, and they’re more comfortable with each other than with Harry. “Killing chickens to get their feathers is not collecting resources, it’s wasting your time.”

Gavino glares at him. “I also have skill in things like fishing and cooking,” he tells Enzio haughtily.

Harry’s reminded of Ron. He usually does that too, hoarding resources and then laughing hysterically when prices drop to a minimum, sending him a screenshot each time. Harry promised not to tell, because that practice doesn’t make someone very popular, and he doesn’t believe spreading around that Gavino’s a part of your average price-inflating guild of trolls will do him much good either.

“Lucky for us,” Gavino continues just as heated, “the prices here are based on supply and demand in the market itself, not influenced by inventories.”

Minor details like that is why Harry stays with them.

For now, anyway.

* * *

The thing Harry might hate more about this place than the non-players is the waiting.

Waiting for mobs to respawn, for the cooldown period between repeatable quests to end, for the sun to set so he can wander through town without the press of a crowd fighting over whose turn it is at the public cooking station, strictly for personal use, or who was first in line for this or that NPC.

* * *

Every morning at half-past five, Harry stops looking for mobs to kill and goes back to Velia, sitting down in the high grass on the southern hill, within the boundaries of the green-zone. He opens the menu and spends a lazy five minutes looking for the logout button while the sun creeps up into the sky.

When he’s done looking for a button he knows won’t appear, he rises and walks the sandy path north, then down the steps to the wharf. There is a small raised wooden platform where the warehouse manager stands at all hours, despite most other NPCs disappearing at night. 

He spends some time looking through his inventory, sorting the mess that it has become overnight, running over to a fishing rod vendor not five metres away to sell whatever he can’t put on the marketplace; they don’t discriminate.

With the loot he has left he goes back up the stairs, taking a left to the plaza where the Velia marketplace stall is. During the day there’s a man standing in front of it screaming something or other about houses, but unlike the warehouse, Harry need not interact with him to get to the market menu.

He lists everything, from rubbish earrings to low grade crystals. They’re worth a pittance, but people love gambling, combining two accessories hoping to upgrade them. They tend to blow them up instead and then have to begin the process again.

Harry spends about a galleon for a simple meal, which he thinks is expensive, but he doesn’t cook, so he’s not actually sure what the ingredients are and how difficult it is to prepare. For all he knows, it’s definitely worth twenty-seven sickles. He chews on tasteless rubbery food because even if technically they don’t need sustenance, the discomfort that comes instead of hunger pains is _really_ distracting.

At a quarter to six, Harry gets up and walks up to one of the NPC houses that has a barrel under the overhang that he can use to get up on the roof. First, he looks down to where Enzio and Gavino are resting on thin sleeping mats, then he looks at his feet and over the edge. 

Harry isn’t much of a fan of these kinds of heights, so he reminds himself out loud, “This is not real.” 

Then he jumps and hopes he lands on his feet, which he does today, and the display in front of him says he gained some jumping EXP. Great.

With a little over five minutes left to six, he goes for a run. He follows along the green border in an unhurried pace so that by the time his clock says it’s five past six, he has circled Velia twice, coming to a stop at the same house he started from. 

It seems with every kilometre he runs, he feels a little less distrustful of his body, like he’s slowly relearning how it works. He feels a little less disconnected—like the NerveGear has better access to his sense memory.

Velia and Olvia aren’t very different in terms of aesthetics. 

All things considered, Olvia feels larger because it’s more spread out, but in reality it’s Velia that’s bigger, definitely more a town than the former capital of Balenos is. It has more features, the marketplace and the wharf being two of those, more NPCs and more houses that players can either rent or buy.

The houses for sale require insane amounts of galleons, at least at this point in the game, but it means the buyer is the only one able to have their residence in that particular building on that particular server. 

Without an owner, up to ten separate people can have the house as their place of residence, those _Contribution Points_ acting as a deposit along with a hefty sum of galleons. He doesn’t dream of buying or even renting a house anytime soon.

Actually, Harry doesn’t dream of anything at all.

The shops all open at six in the morning, which is when all the NPCs that disappear at night march en masse from their homes to their designated function with little focus on anything else. Harry prefers to keep his distance, so he waits until five past six to walk through the otherwise quiet town, as most players won’t rise until nine. He doesn’t understand why everyone and their mother insists on keeping up that farce; it’s not like they _need_ to rest.

“Why do you pretend to sleep?” Harry finally asks a few days later, after spending a day wrapped up in a new cloak, mostly a cosmetic item apart from the 5% EXP boost—his mum would still argue convenience even in the face of that. Most of his face is obscured by its hood, he loves it. “I don’t see a reason to use our rest ability, our bodies don’t get tired. Not _really_ , anyway.” 

As long as day may seem, it’s not true fatigue that he feels at the end.

It can’t be.

Enzio looks shocked, but then shakes his head. “It’s not about resting your body, Harry, it’s about resting your head, you know?”

Harry doesn’t know.

* * *

He tries it. 

Takes the thin sleeping mat out of his inventory and lays down on it.

Stares up at the unfamiliar sky. 

If he’d known anything about constellations, he’d be looking for them, comparing them, while he waits to fall into a rest. Harry is relatively safe here so his body can relax. There are no mobs here, he can’t get killed here, he is as safe as he could be in a _death game_.

It’s almost like camping, he thinks.

Sirius would have known.

Sirius used to point out different constellations to him when they went camping, the three of them, Sirius, his father and him. They haven’t been in years, but Harry remembers their trips fondly, aches for them now in a way he knows he’d physically feel if he were able to. 

The game has taken a lot of things away from them, and Harry has lost all sensation except a strange pressure that doesn’t go away.

His mind keeps racing.

“Right!” Harry says decisively as he sits up. “This is not working.”

“Are you serious?” Gavino replies from where he’s laying down. “You didn’t even try!”

“You said it, I’m old.” Harry shrugs and folds his legs. “Besides, you teenagers are experts on things like sleeping.” Like he himself is so far off. “Don’t you guys sleep through an entire day?”

“But—” Gavino cuts himself off with a frown. 

Enzio mutters something to himself, then turns on his side with his back to Harry.

* * *

They might have a point.

He feels _restless_.

* * *

Unlocked: 1

Location: Velia, Balenos

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 17

Gavino LV. 13

Enzio LV. 10

Having the boys around is both a blessing and a curse. They’re—they’re boys, is the thing, they’re _young,_ it’s heartbreaking. As time passes, they have fewer and fewer gems of knowledge they haven’t given Harry yet or that he hasn’t figured out on his own, so that eventually stops being a reason to stick with them. They’re impatient to level, but they hate having to grind in lesser spots because the good ones are all taken.

Harry grits his teeth and bears it.

Sometimes Harry feels like the days are flying by and the next moment it seems to crawl past. It’s hard to keep track of days, too. There isn’t a calendar they can check, nowhere a date is displayed. Their clocks stopped working shortly after the initial announcement, so there’s not even a chance to check the real time, like they made sure to remove as many reminders of real life as possible.

It’s disgustingly easy to get used to things here, disgustingly easy to fall into a routine, disgustingly easy to believe this has been real all along. 

Perhaps it is—it certainly _feels_ real.

There are aspects missing but even those are forgot about, pushed to the back of the mind in lieu of other concerns. With those concerns gone, it becomes even easier to just forget what it was like. There is an ache in his chest at the thought of his family and his friends, the knowledge that he’ll never see them again creating a harsh pressure, so he tries to distract himself.

This is their new reality.

* * *

Despite there being a premium store option in the general menu, it surprised Harry to see a physical store in Velia. It’s less a store and more of just a shady looking person standing in an otherwise empty house. Harry already spent some money, but he figures, he may as well try to get what he needs while he still has the funds. 

The longer he’s stuck here, the more of his savings will be eaten by rent and utility bills. What does he care that he can no longer afford those, when he’s busy trying not to _die_ in this stupid game?

Still, he mentally apologises to his father (an apology to his mother isn’t necessary considering her stance on the issue) when he ventures into the premium store, looking for special upgrade stones that you can’t otherwise get in-game. At least, nobody has figured out yet how to get them beyond getting them from the monthly lootbox.

Harry needs the guaranteed upgrade for his glaive. 

He loves his weapon of choice, he had spent a few days trying out different ones until he settled on the glaive. Enzio takes to rapiers while Gavino sticks to blades. Harry doesn’t see many others with spears or glaives or ranseurs. He doesn’t know how the weaponsmith skill works, but he hopes it’s not too specific, hopes that they all fall under the same category, pole weapons or something.

He can kind of understand why few would choose a pole weapon, but he absolutely loves the weight of the weapon, the way he has to move with it, enjoys practising not tripping over the other end, much like a dance. It’s only been a few days, he’s not very good at it yet, but he’s getting used to the way it weighs him down, the way it leans when he takes too sharp a turn. He’s still learning how to hold it when on his horse, so he just leaves it in his inventory when he travels between Olvia and Velia, not quite ready to venture into the next region, Serendia, and visiting the towns and farms there.

There’s a handful of players who have gone ahead, but they’ve not ventured further than Heidel, Serendia’s capital. It’s a much prettier city than Velia, they claim, but Harry doesn’t care much about that. 

He just wants to survive.

* * *

“Nightmare says they found the Chamber of Secrets,” Gavino says one afternoon.

“I have no idea who that is, but I’m assuming you want to go there?” Harry asks.

Gavino looks unsure. “Yeah, I guess. I told him we’ve been training here, so he asked if we wanted to come with them. They have a whole group in Hogsmeade, so they’re going to take on the dungeon together.”

“That’s great,” Harry says.

 _No thank you_ , he doesn’t say, but he doesn’t have to.

* * *

The thing is, Harry doesn’t know these boys, but he knows he doesn’t want to die.

These things are connected, somehow.

* * *

He waits four days after they’ve disappeared past the treeline before he lets his finger hover in front of the display, caught in indecision. Harry’s not an idiot, he knows Gavino got that message days before he mentioned it and only brought it up at the last second. That, right there, should be reason enough not to do it. There are many reasons not to do it. 

They are only kids. 

They helped him when they didn’t have to. 

He might need their help again.

For whatever bizarre reason, they might need his. 

They might have information he needs.

_Are you sure you want to delete user_ Gavino _from your friends list?_

_Warning: this action will also remove you from their friends list._

_Think carefully before proceeding to avoid misunderstandings._

They might also die.

_Deletion confirmed. User_ Gavino _no longer appears in your friends list._

Harry doesn’t want to know when they do.

* * *

Unlocked: 2

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 21

  
  


He runs into Hedwig three weeks in.

Harry has known Hedwig since he was a child, when she used to babysit him. In-game she looks as beautiful as she does out of it, with sleek blonde hair down to her waist and light brown eyes. She’s nearly as tall as Harry, wearing heels and a white dress that makes her look a little ethereal; the only things missing are wings.

Hedwig recognises him despite the hood of his premium cloak, although she refuses to tell him how. It hurts to see her, but a secret part of him rejoices at the thought of finding someone familiar. She has a surprisingly high level for someone who has the emblem of the Order of the Phoenix guild floating near her cursor.

She drags him into one of two inns in Heidel, this one on the main road they’ve started calling _the boulevard_. They take a table outside so they can watch the mayhem that is the warehouse manager and the many people trying to interact with him at the same time.

A non-player brings them mugs with steaming tea. The game is realistic enough that it lets them drink, and when they first go there, Harry wondered how that works, but he’s long since stopped caring about any of that. It works, and that’s that.

Hedwig’s smile is as beautiful as the rest of her. “I’m an officer,” she says with a wink, leaning in like it’s a secret. Her smile morphs into a grin at his grimace. “Oh, none of that,” she says, laying a hand on his lower arm and squeezing. 

She must squeeze hard, because he thinks he can feel a low pressure, or maybe it’s just the idea of it.

Just then a horse and carriage passes them, the horseshoes loud on the cobblestones. It takes a right, going east. They patiently wait for it to disappear down the road leading out of Heidel. There is a blacksmith right across from them, but his clanging noises are easier to tune out. 

“The guilds are—” Another carriage. “For fuck’s sake,” Harry complains over the loud noise.

Hedwig snort-laughs. “It just doesn’t want you to say it!” she says when the carriage is out of earshot. “Ah, perhaps this wasn’t the best spot to have a conversation.” She smiles knowingly.

A third carriage passes them; the main roads of Heidel are a popular spot for horse trainers, each carriage pulled by four horses at a time.

They drink their tea before getting up and relocating to the other inn. It’s loud there as well, more of a pub feel to it, but at least there are no horses or waves of people walking past. A bard NPC plays pleasant music in the background, and they find a spot where they can both hear each other and his music. 

Harry learns Hedwig won her NerveGear in a giveaway, that she hadn’t planned on participating but that her company had entered every employee. She worked as support for an email service that was hired by Hog’s Head. 

“I would have bought one anyway,” she confesses, “the marketing was rather well-done.” Her ever-present smile turns a little bitter.

“Wasn’t it just?” Harry agreed just as bitterly.

* * *

Unlocked: 2

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 21

Brainy Bird LV. 21

Guilds are an important aspect of the game. Even then, Harry refuses to join one, prefers to go solo because he’s aware of how easy it is to die. Guilds mean companionship, they mean socialising and building friendships, and he’s seen plenty of times players go out for a grind and then never come back. Has received error messages in his mailbox of players no longer appearing on his friend list after witnessing their deaths.

Serendia 4 is ruled by the Order of the Phoenix, one of such guilds, in fact, it’s one of the earliest guilds created. It’s part of a network of other guilds that all work on the front lines. The Order only recruits new members out of the network as far as Harry knows. He’d call it elitism if he didn’t also think it was a very smart move, considering the amount of trust necessary on the front lines.

Despite his refusal, Harry keeps up with the news, making sure his levels align with members in the higher guilds. He knows most of the fighting players on Serendia 4, as the further they go, the fewer players remain. Partially because players are still not being careful enough, dying left and right, and also because there just aren’t that many people actively playing the game.

They meet up the next day to grind together after they realise they’re the same level. It means they can take on slightly tougher enemies. 

“Have you met Fawkes yet?” Hedwig asks curiously as they cross the Demi River. “You seem to know many players, it’s a miracle we’ve not run into each other before. You stick to Serendia 4, right?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, shifting to accommodate his horse, who’s shaking her head. He takes the reins in his left hand while he uses his right to mess around with his menu. He sends a quick message to one blacksmith he met the other day with a repair request, knows they’re sticking to Glish, a village in the south of Serendia, which isn’t far from where they’re going.

They keep a steady pace, passing Costa Farm and following the road down the map until they’re at the Central Guard Camp. They’re generally grinding over at the Altar Imps, but with two of them they should be able to make quick work of the Nagas. They tie off their horses at the guard post.

Hedwig stops him before they step onto the road. From the look on her face, she’s reading a message. “Harry, if we team up we can do Fogans,” she suggests.

“You, me and who?”

“Fawkes and Dumbledore.”

Harry sighs. He _really_ doesn’t want to. He’s seen Dumbledore around grinding spots, the guild leader of the Order of the Phoenix, and while he has no problems with the man, their conversations always have a bit of an undertone to them. 

“Do we have to?”

Hedwig’s lips twitch. “We don’t, but we’ll run into them anyway because they’re also grinding Nagas together.”

“Running into them isn’t the same as being in a party with them.” He can’t explain what he has against it either. “I just don’t want to get bombarded with guild recruitment.”

Hedwig nods. “I understand, but we wouldn’t do that. We could use your—” 

“Hedwig!”

“God, Harry, I’m just _saying_.” She laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Replaced Cron Castle (Hogwarts) and Cron Castle Site (Hogsmeade).


	3. Episode 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd as of yet, will probably replace the beta'd version with it when I get it back. Nothing much should change, just a cleaner, brit-picked, overall better version, so I don't feel too bad posting this.
> 
> A note on chapter length: on average they're about 5k each, but some chapters will be longer or shorter than that, depending on content rather than size. There's a much smaller 2.5 coming up, for example.

Unlocked: 13

Location: Glish, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 42

  
  


The backroom looks like they’re running a recycling shop; boxes with broken weapons, wood splinters and several types of consumables including potions. You wouldn’t have guessed that it was a blacksmith’s shop at all, but Harry knows better. The shelves are all empty, and they’re in the middle of moving in.

He sits at a table in the corner and his recently repaired glaive rests against the wall at his back. “I may not know how to read whatever this is,” he says, and he waves his hand at a box full of scrolls, “but I know what to look for. Just let me look at it myself, Bones.”

He has already snatched a scroll by the time he’s finished speaking to the blacksmith, and he skims over the contents. He whistles as he inspects the scroll with a critical eye. He’s seen plenty of them, they’re quest scrolls, but something’s wrong with it. 

Ah.

They’re the remains of cancelled quests, easy enough to obtain multitudes of. There’s a very small symbol on the back that marks it invalid, so small it goes unnoticed by many players, so trying to complete it won’t do anything. NPCs don’t even notice them. “They’re invalid,” he says, putting the parchment back on the table and tapping it slowly.

Bones winces but doesn’t look surprised to hear it.

“I refuse to finance whatever scheme you’ve cooked up here, it can only mean bad news for the rest of us when they figure it out,” Harry says firmly, because the only reason he can think of having that many invalid quest scrolls is some kind of scam.

Bones doesn’t have a chance to defend herself, the door to the store front opening with a bang. Davis rushes in. “Guys!” she barks at them as she passes by, waving around one of the metal bars she is practising her toolsmith skills on. “Thanks for your help, you piece of shit,” she hisses at the co-owner of the store. She stalks away again, back into the shop, before either can reply. The door slams closed behind her once more.

Bones sighs. “Well then, the boss has spoken.”

Harry smiles tightly. “She’s hardly your boss.”

The woman shrugs. “I don’t mind. She’s right, can’t drive away business before it starts.” She stands. “That means my break’s over, move it.”

Bones and Davis are the first players with a building to settle in. They had to buy out the NPC owner before they could move in and most of the galleons came from the guilds they’re in and a few players, including Harry. After that they had to invest a shitload of _Contribution Points_ into the building as a type of deposit, because nothing in the game ever comes easy. Luckily for them, there’s a lot of interest around H:CoS in smiths. Most players are curious, of course, but there are also a lot of fighters looking for someone with a higher smithing skill to enhance their weaponry, armour and tools.

“Are you staying in town?” Bones asks.

“Wasn’t going to.” Harry sucks on his tongue, holding back all the words he can’t say where they might easily be overheard. He leans on the now flattened paper, almost losing his balance when the parchment rolled under his hand. “Whatever you’re doing, that thing isn’t worth a log.”

Bones’ expression tightens. “Look, Orange, I’d appreciate you not judging what you don’t know. All I wanted to know is if they’re valid or not, I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“All I’m thinking is scams,” Harry says, trying not to react to his dreaded nickname.

“Have a care,” the blacksmith snaps.

Harry holds up his hands. “Alright, alright, I apologise.” He has a thing for sticking his nose into things he shouldn’t, and Bones knows that perfectly well, because she just sighs and rolls her eyes at him. They forgive so easily, she’s grinning again. “Just—be careful, then.”

“I owe you, Goldilocks,” Bones says.

Harry accepts the chaste kiss when it comes, a promise, an acknowledgement. “You do,” he agrees with an easy smile.

* * *

Favours, Harry quickly learned, are priceless.

He’s great at collecting them, too.

* * *

Unlocked: 13

Location: Quint Hill, Calpheon

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 42

Troll blood is an amazing source of income. 

Harry still has extra time in his days because he doesn’t bother resting as much as everyone else. He’s taken to resting only three to four hours a night. It’s a little spooky to be walking around without a single player anywhere, like he’s entirely alone in the world, apart from the mobs. They’re stronger at night, but they also give more experience.

Harry only goes Troll hunting at night, because he’s careful about his money spots. It’s redundant, because most players don’t do anything other than grind, and when they’re not grinding or resting, they’re just—socialising. They don’t care about other skills or that they can easily access areas supporting players can’t, such as the Trolls.

He doesn’t always go here. Sometimes he goes woodcutting, sometimes he goes mining, sometimes he kills sheep for the meat and the blood. The point is, there’s always something to do, and Harry doesn't like sitting idle.

Another bonus to gathering is that it’s not drop reliant, each kill is the same amount. Right now they’re relying on mob drops for their accessories but the playing crowd of the population has collectively found out that as the unused quantity of resources in inventories goes up, the drop rate goes down. 

But Troll blood and meat and logs operate independently of those. It’s _perfect_ , although Harry had spared a thought for Gavino and hoped to God he wasn’t one of the hoarders.

The Trolls are a little tough but no match for his glaive. They’re slow and stupid, but then, players (including Harry) are stupid as well. Even though Bones assured him there was nothing nefarious going on—or was that what she’d said?—he couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering what the hell she’s planning on doing with those invalid quest scrolls. If she lied and she is involved in a scam, she’ll never be able to safely leave the green-zone again; they’ll kill her for sure.

Players know they’re acquaintances, does Harry want to be associated with someone like that? They’re not friends even though they’ve known each other for two months now. Well, _Harry_ doesn’t think they’re friends, he doesn’t know what Bones thinks about that.

But then Harry remembers that Bones is part of the Hufflepuff guild, the biggest guild on the Valencia 2 server, and their GM won’t stand for something like that. There has to be something else going on, it’s just that Harry can’t figure out what it is. Perhaps, he thinks sheepishly, he should’ve just listened to her when she tried explaining instead of sticking to what he thought was going on.

He’s nosy, he can’t help it.

* * *

Players die too easily, no rhyme or rhythm to it.

He’s seen players get hit and instantly turn into a blue little flame before disappearing altogether and he’d rather not go blue himself, thanks. Perhaps the only mercy is that it looks like a painless death, the player utterly unaware. Perhaps that’s the best way to go.

One day you’ll be telling a friend all about the beautiful view from a certain vantage point and you agree to meet up at a certain location tomorrow after lunch to waste the day away because what else can you do?

And the next day, while you’re showing your friend that view, you’ll get ambushed by red cursors, players who have killed others. Your friend will manage to get away, but all you’ll be is an error message waiting for them on their display. 

  
  


_Error 74: Username_ X _will no longer appear in your friends list._

  
  


It will stay on their screen for exactly five seconds after they open the message, and then without prompting your name will get deleted from their friends list as if you were _never there at all_. On a bad day, Harry entertains the thought that it won’t be such a bad thing to become _never there at all_ , but most days he’s alright and his thoughts don’t go that dark.

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to keep going, because what is the point?

* * *

So yes, the Trolls are strong but Harry is stronger, he knows this but he still has to stay cautious. He knows he can solo these mobs and generally reds, named aptly after the colour of their cursor floating above their heads, steer clear of Serendia 4. Generally, but not always.

He kneels down to gather the blood of another slain Troll when he hears a wordless shout and a panicked yell, “Oh fuck!” He startles violently, dropping the fluid gatherer in the grass, hand on one of the daggers tied to his belt. At first glance, he doesn’t see anyone, it’s too dark to see clearly. But then movement to his left catches his eye.

A lone figure is caged in by three Trolls, the first one watching curiously but thankfully not joining them. The player is cursing up a storm while swinging their weapon of choice—a sad looking mace that has clearly seen better days—around wildly in a way that Harry knows all too well: that of a player not yet accustomed to their body and their weapon. Their health bar is quickly depleting, too.

Whoever it is, he’s about to go blue, and soon. Their total HP has to be ridiculously low.

Harry picks up his glaive and jogs over. They’re standing in a circle of wooden spikes and catapults. He’s not sure how well he will handle three at a time, but he should at least try. He makes the mistake of jogging past the first Troll, and ends up pulling aggro. “Shit,” he mutters darkly. He gets slammed into one of the spikes for his troubles.

He gasps, feeling the spikes in his back and expecting a well of pain but instead getting a sense of near paralysing pressure that he has to fight through. If he’s not careful, he’s going to go blue himself. Jesus, that player had better be signing his praises after this.

With effort he manages to free himself, instantly grabbing a dagger and throwing it into the Troll’s face. It doesn’t do much damage, but it stuns the monster for the necessary seconds it takes Harry to finish the job. One down, two to go. The inbox icon on his right goes from eight to nine unread messages because that kill completes a repeatable quest he took.

“You can start helping anytime now,” Harry says through gritted teeth.

A club slams him into the ground and he manages to roll out of the way just in time of another hit. The second Troll is easier to take out, and the Third one doesn’t even notice him, still focused on the other player. It manages one hit before it dies, however, and Harry blinks up at the dark sky, once more on his back in the grass.

He thinks, as he lays there uselessly for a moment, that if players could bleed in H:CoS, all spawning pits would be covered in a thick layer of red. 

He demands his limbs to start moving again despite the heavy pressure. It won’t go away until sometime tomorrow, probably, and he wonders if there will be a point where he’s got used to it. Harry gets to his feet and looks around for the player.

Oh, well that explains. 

He sighs and collects his weaponry, returning the dagger to its sheath and sending the glaive to his inventory to keep his hands free. He slowly makes his way over to the player, who must have been down to either a handful of hit points if he’s unconscious. Lucky guy.

Harry pushes the legs of said guy close to the body, grabs an arm and pulls at the player’s arm until he can carry him safely. With his free hand he grabs he opens up his inventory and grabs his flute. There’s no way he’s walking back to town with a man, although certainly lighter than he looks, hanging limply from his shoulders. He whistles and waits for his horse to come to him. Lucky for him he has a two-seater.

It takes ages to get back to Glish, and he’s tempted to go back and go to Calpheon City instead, but he keeps going. By the time he’s returned, morning light has appeared and some players have risen. He gets a few odd looks from passersby but other than that gets pretty much undisturbed to the inn. He considers renting the guy a room at the inn, but it’s not like Harry needs his bed right now, so he just dumps the man on the bed in his own room. It doesn’t wake him, but Harry didn’t expect him to.

It’s when he’s about to leave that he takes a good luck at—

What the—

Draco _fucking_ Malfoy, what the actual fuck.

* * *

Getting upset does wonders for his stamina. He runs and runs around Glish, making sure to stay within the green-zone. Another person he knew is in H:CoS. He stamps on the bit of happiness he imagines fluttering in his chest at the discovery with a vengeance. Firstly, nobody deserves H:CoS, Harry wouldn’t have wished it for his high school rival, and secondly, _high school rival_. This is not a happy occasion.

And yet.

* * *

Unlocked: 13

Location: Glish, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 42

Heirlomes LV. 26

“Why am I covered in fairy dust?”

Seriously, this guy. “I used my demo healing crystal on you,” Harry says faux casually, closing his inventory window and glancing up just in time to watch Malfoy’s face go through a number of complicated looking emotions until it seems to settle on horror. Which is weird, because having someone use a demo item on you is a damn big compliment to be given. 

They get a helpful demo item along with their lootbox every month, and players are wondering if they’re seriously considered or just more toys to experiment with. The first one was a teleport crystal, the second one a mana crystal and the most recent one was a healing crystal.

“Potter?”

“Harry,” he corrects.

“Sure, whatever, what the—wait, what do you mean, you used a crystal on me?” Malfoy asks incredulously, like that’s the most important part. Maybe, to someone with such shitty armour, it is. “Those things cost a small fortune.” Ah. “You should’ve just used a potion or whatever.

Malfoy would know about _small fortunes_ , wouldn’t he?

Although, maybe he’s forgot what it was like to have things.

Harry doubts it, but he wonders what it’s like to go from having everything to apparently owning nothing more than a broken weapon. Surely he has enough money to go on a shopping spree in the premium store? 

He holds up the empty holder lined with trace amounts of pink dust and waves it in the air. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” There’s a weird look of something on Malfoy’s face that Harry can’t identify. “Are you okay? I have food.”

Malfoy splutters for a few seconds. “Am I okay?” he repeats needlessly. “I don’t—I mean, yes, I guess so?” He takes the offered sandwich as if on autopilot. “Apart from being here, obviously.”

Harry unwraps his own food. He bought the sandwiches yesterday, sick of the sight of cooked fish, but they’re a luxury he doesn’t often indulge in. He has quite a few food ingredients saved up that he has no use for unless he decides to level his cooking skill, but he keeps the ingredients anyway, _just in case_. 

“I wasn’t expecting to know anyone here,” Malfoy says after a few bites. He turns hesitant, then finally asks, “Have you seen Granger?”

Harry blinks. “What.” He clears his throat and lowers his own sandwich. “No?” 

Hermione’s here too? 

“You’re on speaking terms with—but—no, I have not.” Harry feels the abrupt need to sit down, so he lets himself collapse on the other side of the bed, landing on a pair of feet and shoving them away. “Sorry,” he says.

“Oh.” Malfoy pulls his legs up. “That’s—we ran into each other. Familiar faces, right? But then got split up, so I didn’t—but, hey, guess I owe you one. For the crystal, I mean. I don’t have anything fancy, though.”

“I noticed,” Harry says, looking at his lap. He taps his fingers together, presses a fingernail into his thumb. He waits until they’re both done with their food before saying, “But if she’s still in your list—”

“Right, this was fun!” Malfoy interrupts, too loud. He throws his legs over the edge, standing up with jerky motions. “But I should go.” He puts his boots back on, wrestles his arms into the sleeves of his ratty jacket. “Thanks for the food,” he says, looking around. “Wait, where’s my mace?”

Harry opens and closes his fists and imagines he can feel the muscles pull when he spreads his fingers wide. He does this sometimes, to try to see if something has changed. Nothing has so far, but it’s worth it to try and compare. “You can get the pieces smelted back into bars.” 

Malfoy opens his menu and checks his inventory, the way he moves his hands similar to what Harry used to do until he set the shortcuts. It just reminds Harry that Malfoy seems lost in this world, the complete opposite of what he’s used to seeing. The boy used to strut around like he owned the school, competing with Hermione over having the best marks. He always knew what was going on in the school before anyone else did. He had _everything_.

“The smithy here has a forge for public use but I recommend asking a weaponsmith to do it for you, they usually get twice the amount of resources out of it.” _And if you look pathetic enough, they’ll do it for free_ , Harry doesn’t add. He gets up. “There’s a player-owned shop here. I can take you there?”

“I know where it is.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. That’s—they’re pretty hard to miss. Everyone’s been talking about it for the last two weeks. First player-owned building, wow.” Harry awkwardly swallows and thinks of something else he can say but gives up. “Okay, well. I guess I’ll see you around, then.”

Malfoy looks down as he fiddles with a button on his jacket. “There’s all these new rules here and I haven’t really spoken to many people. I don’t want to accidentally offend someone.”

“Right,” Harry agrees with a vehement nod, “it’s very important to stay on good terms with the players responsible for your equipment.”

“Exactly! So.” Malfoy finally looks up, a small smile on his face as if to ask for a truce. “So, you seem like you know your way around. Maybe you could show me?”

Harry’s shoulders drop as he relaxes. “I can do that.”

* * *

Glish is a circular village, with a small church at the centre of it. They’re surrounded by farmland and farming quests, but despite its size, it’s a popular site and not just because Bones and Davis decided to settle here. Serendia is now considered a medium strength area. The top players are further ahead, staying in Calpheon City and its nearby villages.

Harry still makes sure to keep up with the front lines, but the sad truth is that most don’t bother. There are a lot more non-players than there are players, and they’re glued to the earlier towns, specifically Olvia and Velia. Even Heidel is too difficult to reach for some of them, let alone Calpheon City. 

There are ways to avoid spawn sites by taking the long route from Serendia’s capital Heidel to Calpheon City. It takes ages that way, but it’s possible and worth it even if you don’t have the correct level. Then again, the spawn sites you encounter when going directly from Heidel to Calpheon aren’t so bad either. A fast horse takes you there within an hour and there’s plenty of high tiered horses being sold, just gallop straight through.

About a month in, Hogwarts swapped main servers with the Order of the Phoenix, both part of the same front line guild network. Not all players made the server switch, because Harry still regularly runs into familiar faces wearing the Order emblem next to their cursor. Now, Glish has become a hotspot, too popular for its size, ever since Hogwarts made the village their home. Most business being done on the Serendia 4 server now happens in either Glish or Heidel, both settlements transformed into ants’ nests.

Harry and Malfoy come up to the shop just as Davis turns the plaque from ‘open’ to ‘closed’.

There’s still a few players inside finishing up their business. Harry tries to slip past the toolsmith, but she bars his entrance with a spidery hand to his chest. “Excuse you,” she says, looking scandalised.

“Oh, come on,” Harry whines.

“ _No_ , I will be giving off the wrong impression,” she says with a jerk of her head at Malfoy behind him. “First I let you in and suddenly everyone thinks they can just drop by whenever,” she continues, raising her voice so everyone in the vicinity can hear. “You can use the stairs, just like everyone else coming by for dinner. Now _shoo_ and let me close up shop.”

Hint taken. 

“Sorry, I thought this was easier but you’re right.” Harry says demurely. 

He backs away and pulls Malfoy with him to the porch between the shop and the next building. The door recognises him and opens for him, and Harry leads them through the narrow hallway. To the right are the stairs leading up to the apartment above the shop, the door to which does not recognise him, but at the end of the hall is a door that’s connected to the shop’s storage room. “They live upstairs. It came with the building when they bought it,” Harry explains to a quiet Malfoy.

The storage room is in disarray, more than it was when Harry was here earlier.

Bones stands over a box and carelessly throws in whatever ingots she’s taking out of her inventory. There are more boxes stacked around the room that were definitely not here when Harry was here this morning, and they don’t all hold the same materials either.

“So does Davis know what you are doing with the scrolls?” Harry asks curiously.

“Gah!”

Harry ducks the ingot thrown at his head with a chuckle. “Sorry.” He removes his hood and sits down on the same chair as this morning. The storage units around them look better, everything carefully sorted into boxes, but other than that it’s an absolute mess. “I didn’t know you had _this_ much,” he says.

Bones pushes the box away and takes another. “Davis and I kept it in our own warehouse until two hours ago.” She throws some broken weapons into the new box. “Did you know a store’s inventory doesn’t count against the drop rate? They did some experimenting, kept a tally of the drops with and without our inventory stocked.”

Harry hums. “Won’t the game see that as exploiting and balance it out?”

“That’s what the guilds think too, but as they said, not our problem.” 

Malfoy makes a choking noise.

Bones finally notices him. “What? It really isn’t. We’re not the ones looking to exploit. Smiths are fine keeping it in our own inventory, but it’s you players that are becoming greedy.” She gives him a once-over. “Well,” she amends, “maybe not _you_ in particular, judging by your shitty gear.”

Bones and Davis are part of daughter guilds Hufflepuff and Slytherin respectively, ruling Valencia 2 and Valencia 9 respectively. Bones is a weaponsmith while Davis is a toolsmith and for some reason they prefer Serendia 4 to their guilds’ home servers. Harry can’t blame them, he can’t stand the other servers either. 

At least on Serendia 4 it’s all predictable to him. He knows who to expect where, knows most of the weaker guilds, knows most of Hogwarts and guests from the Order.

Bones crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Who are you? It’s rude to keep your hood up when you’re in a private setting, you know.”

“She’s lying,” Harry quickly reassures Malfoy before he can say something. He glares at the girl in front of him. “It’s only rude if they’ve told you their name. He hasn’t.” He uses his thumb to point at Malfoy.

Bones grins at him. “What is this, Goldilocks? You made a friend?” She raises her chin in open curiosity. “What makes him special? I’ve been good to you, too,” she finishes playfully.

“He’s not a friend,” Harry says, “I don’t need friends.”

Bones shakes her head. “I’m sorry you think that. But! I’m sure you’re not here for another lecture.” 

Harry really isn’t. 

“So how about you tell me why you’re here while I finish this. Also, will you sit down? You’re in the way.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Malfoy quickly says, coming over to the table and dropping down in the other chair. “Harry said you can smelt my broken weapon into ore.”

“Does he?” Bones raises an eyebrow at the name but doesn’t comment on it, even though her face is saying lots of things. “We can certainly do that, although at my level it’d be bars.”

“Nice brag.”

“Shut up, _Harry_.” She gives Malfoy another speculative look. “Let me finish this box and I’ll get right on that. First, what’s the name you go by, and second, what kind of weapon are we talking?” She makes a few motions on the invisible screen in front of her, and her eyebrows rise once more. “Interesting username.”

Malfoy colours slightly. “I’m dyslexic,” he says curtly. “Pressed enter too fast.”

Bones winces at her faux pas. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “It—has a certain charm to it?” she tries.

“A dyslexic type of charm, yes,” Malfoy says with a snort. He sighs. “It’s fine. My name’s Draco and my weapon is a mace. It _was_ a mace, there’s not much left of it.”

“Sweet, a morning star? I go by Susan, by the way.”

“No, I couldn’t—I wanted one, though.”

“Oh, hm. Well, regardless, good choice. I approve of you already. There aren’t too many players around not going for swords, you know. They’re too lazy to level their weapon skills, but maces are great. Have you ever tried using a flail? Warhammer?”

Malfoy shakes his head. “I’ve seen them in shops but I think I like maces better. Something about the shape? And I don’t want to hit myself in the face with my own weapon.”

Bones closes the lid of the box and sits down on it. “Those weapons you see in the NPC shops, they’re all pretty generic. Even with enhancements, they’ll never beat a weapon customised to your body and other preferences. _Harry_ here should know.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Harry says immediately. “It happened once.”

“It happened once because I customised your weapon after that,” Bones says smartly before addressing Malfoy. “He tripped over the end of his glaive. It would’ve been hilarious if it didn’t almost get him killed.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Bones and Davis both use that story to convince players to pay for customisation, the latter who chooses that moment to come in. “I didn’t almost get killed, let alone because I tripped. I lost half of my health because—”

“Because you fell right into the loving arms of a Troll,” Bones says.

“— _because you lied about your level,_ ” Harry says, raising his voice to be heard over the laughter. “Screw you, no, that’s not what happened.” He turns to Malfoy, “When you team up with someone and they tell you their level, always deduct fifteen. Ten because players lie and another five because you don’t know if you mesh well together.”

“Eleven,” Malfoy says.

Harry cocks his head to the side as he waits for that to sink in. “What were you even doing in Quint Hill? Actually, how the fuck did you get that far?” he immediately barks in surprise when it does, startling the other three. “Jesus Christ, Malfoy, you should be hanging around in Velia, not messing around Trolls!”

“It’s Draco and I was being careful around the spawning sites.”

Not careful enough if he got ambushed by them, but Harry doesn’t point that out. “Sure, because avoiding spawning sites will help you loads when red cursos spot you. What, you thought the reds around here would just make an exception for a pretty face? Ask you if you’re lost and escort you safely back to the green-zone? Because I’m sure they do that all the fucking time,” he says sarcastically.

He _may_ be exaggerating—the only reds on Serendia 4 are temporary guests, the worse players they have are orange cursors, those who have killed in self-defence. But in his defence, he almost didn’t get to meet Malfoy in-game, it was close as it was.

It seems Malfoy knows about the exaggeration too. “There weren’t any player killers around,” he argues.

Harry flails his arms. “That’s not the point, Malfoy!”

“You know what? I don’t have to listen to this,” Malfoy says, pushing his chair back and standing up. “See you around, Potter.”

“Gonna make it even easier on them without a weapon?” Harry sneers.

Bones physically stops Malfoy from leaving. “Don’t go. Don’t listen to Orange.”

“It’s Gold, arsehole.”

“I really don’t give a shit about you right now,” Bones tells him with a serious warning in her voice. “Draco, Goldilocks is a dick, we don’t know why, but everyone who knows him here knows that’s that. Why don’t we go to the front room and find you something to use while I work on a customisation, okay?”

“I’m not a child,” Malfoy says. “Don’t treat me like one.”

Harry watches them disappear into the front room, fuming. He has no idea what just happened, why he’s so pissed off in the first place, not really. He doesn’t even _like_ Malfoy. He looks at Davis for support, but she shakes her head at him.

“That was incredibly rude,” she says. “I don’t want to see that kind of attitude around me again, do we understand each other?”

“But I’m _right_ ,” Harry hisses as he follows her into the hallway and up the creaky stairs. “He was careless. He could’ve got himself killed. He never should’ve been there, he would have died if I hadn’t found him.”

“And that’s his prerogative.” Davis opens the door to the apartment and turns on the lights. “Look, just because you knew him before doesn’t mean you have a right to judge the way he chooses to spend his time here. Or anywhere else, really. Least of all if you’re ignoring the way he wants to be addressed.”

Harry sighs. “It’s a habit.”

“Then you’d better break that habit, and soon.”

“I don’t even know why I’m angry,” he confesses next. He sits on the couch near the window, slouching down. “We weren’t even friends before. We were barely on friendly terms as it was.”

Davis sits down in the armchair and props her feet up on the table. “What, you want a therapy session while we wait? I’m certified, you know. Free of charge because I can use the practice.”

“No thanks.”

“So, Harry, hmm?”

“Or just Gold.” Davis and Bones know his real name now, he thinks, and his name sounds weird coming from their mouths.

Davis smirks. “I prefer Orange,” she says, eyes locked onto the cursor above his head.

So do most players, sadly.

* * *

Harry doesn’t need anything outside of equipment and a high level to keep himself alive. 

No one does, really, because what they _need_ is to wake up and that’s not going to happen unless they kill a level 100 basilisk down in the Chamber of Secrets and they’re only on level 13 because Riddle, that sadistic bastard, put in a 24 hour cooldown. So they pretend to need other things. 

Harry plays along—he pretends to need sleep and to need exercise, to need food and to need a whole lot of other things. Because he _wants_ to. 

But one of the first decisions Harry consciously made after he watched Gavino and Enzio disappear into the woods near Hogsmeade was removing their usernames from his friends list and hopping to a different server. Regardless of his motivation behind it—or perhaps it’s the reason—sometimes he wonders how they’re doing, if they’re dead yet. He hasn’t asked about them, hasn’t run into them either. 

He kept his friends list empty for another two weeks after deleting the boys but then, as the game went along, found that it was simply easier to communicate through messages instead of going from server to server and town to town asking after someone. So he added a couple of players for a variety of purposes, and then he met Longbottom, who stayed on his friends list even after their business was over and done with. Fucking Longbottom, who taught Harry that friendship is really fucking useless in the face of things.

Friendship doesn’t keep you from going blue.

Friendship doesn’t keep you from becoming _never there at all_.

But Davis has _words_ for him.

* * *

**To User: Bones**

_can you get him the best gear available on his level?_

_i’ll pay for it so just tell him it’s free or something._

_don’t think i have forgot about the scrolls._

~RedNGold

**From User: Bones**

_On it!!! But you should apologise_

_What’s for dinner?!?!_

~Susan, best unaligned blacksmith in town.

Glish 14, Serendia 4

Unaligned blacksmith his arse, that hasn’t been true in over two months yet Bones refuses to change her automated signature apart from adding that now she has a shop. To be fair, Hufflepuff pretty much lets her do whatever she wants without much obligation as long as she prioritises guild work when she gets it, so in a sense she’s right.

But she’s still in Hufflepuff, hardly _unaligned_.

Harry really needs to learn to let these things go.

* * *

Unlocked: 13

Location: Glish, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 43

Heirlomes LV. 26

When Malfoy enters the room, Harry doesn’t look up from his lap. 

He doesn’t like apologising at the best of times and the way Davis is staring at him makes him feel like a child. It makes him want to rebel, makes him want to act like it so they’re both frustrated, instead of just him. “I’m sorry for not using your name, that was rude.”

“Orange!”

He puffs out his cheeks in annoyance. “And I’m sorry for acting like an entitled dick,” he finally adds, even though he’s still convinced he was right. “We all deal with this situation in our own way and even though we were on friendly terms before, I don’t have a right to judge you. It was pointed out to me that you are a grown man who’s fully capable of making his own decisions and if yours is to get yourself killed, that’s entirely up to you.”

Malfoy— _Draco_ raises an eyebrow. “Don’t choke on it. I haven’t heard an apology that insincere in a while,” he says in amusement. He doesn’t look as pissed off anymore, but still. “It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?” Harry repeats. “That’s it?”

“Why, do you want me to stay angry? I was only angry about you not using my name even though I asked you to. You were kind of right about the rest of it,” he says.

Harry looks at Bones. “Is this a trick?” Nothing is this easy. “What did you do? Did you say something?”

Bones rolls her eyes. “I just told him you’re a bossy little shit about everything and everyone and that it’s in Draco’s best interests to put up with it and stay on friendly terms with you because you have a way of sticking your nose into places they don’t belong but you’re so weird, players just take pity on you and let it go.” She takes a deep, unnecessary, breath after that long-winded sentence.

“That is—wow, that is strangely accurate,” Harry says, not even offended. “Huh.”

* * *

Dinner is less stilted than Harry expected. The four of them sit on the floor in Bones and Davis’ living room, plates and bowls on the coffee table between them. There’s a cooking station standing in the short side corner of the L-shaped room, and Davis, who has the highest cooking level of the four of them and is preparing a Mystery Dish, is humming to herself as she accepts Harry’s trade request.

Harry sends her cooked mushrooms for her Mystery Dish. “I have uncooked if you’d rather have those,” he tells her, not yet confirming his side.

“Use them to level your cooking,” Davis says with a light sneer.

“Oh, are those the ones you got from Olvia?” Bones asks curiously.

“Yeah, but I got them at night so they’re better.”

“There’s a difference?” Draco asks.

“It’s like the mobs, they get stronger at night, yeah? Some items like mushrooms and a couple of alchemy flowers change properties. It still doesn’t have any taste but the texture is different in cooking,” Bones explains while Harry finalises the trade. “Salmon?” she offers Davis.

* * *

**From User: Bones**

_We will talk about the scrolls in detail tomorrow, but let me put your mind at ease: it’s really just business. There have been rumours about skills unlocking new features, such as combining different materials to get a new item._

_Ravenclaw found a way to create notebooks but they’re gating the knowledge._

_Arseholes._

~Susan, best unaligned blacksmith in town.

Glish 14, Serendia 4

* * *

To Harry’s surprise, Draco follows him back to the inn. He’s mostly silent, like he’s deep in thought, so Harry lets him be. From the small bits of information Draco’s thrown around, Harry has concluded that he’s been broke for a while, living off of whatever other players donated and steering clear of the premium shop because he’s _not in the practise of wasting money_ , or something similar. How he lost all his items and his money, Harry doesn’t know yet, but Draco knew what red cursors were, so maybe he ran into them, maybe he got pushed into handing over whatever he had left.

It’s no use speculating, however. If his old school rival wants to tell, he will. If he doesn’t, well, Harry’s not going to lose rest over it. “We’ll share a room,” Harry announces. “I’m not spending 15 sickles on a room for you.”

“I never asked you to spend money on me,” is the snippy reply.

“I’m not saying I mind,” Harry says, “I’m saying I’m against wasting money that could be spent otherwise.” If anything, Draco should appreciate that. He opens the door to his— _their_ —room and waves Draco inside, closing the door behind himself as he steps through. “You can take the bed, I have a mat. Unless you don’t rest?”

Draco snorts. “More than I should, probably.”

That explains the rapid recovery rate of his HP, then. Harry takes the resting mat out and rolls it out on the floor. “If I remember correctly, there should be a shower through that door,” he says, pointing at the door between the window and the bed. He throws his cape toward the desk chair and pulls his boots off, sets them at the foot end of the bed and stuffs one sock in each. He doesn’t usually go through the trouble of getting undressed completely but he’s already labelled tomorrow as a Day Of Errands, and he might as well get his preferred clothes looked at.

Harry undoes the buckles of his shin and wrist plates next, putting all items neatly on the desk underneath the windowsill. Maybe he should invest in something that covers his knees and elbows, but he doesn’t actually want to walk around in full body armour. It’ll weigh a ton, it’ll look absolutely ridiculous and it’ll cut down on mobility too much, the latter being the exact reason why he doesn’t wear a chest plate and avoids it unless he needs the DEF boost. 

Gloves are next—he’s given up on gauntlets, awesome as they look, he keeps dropping whatever weapon he’s holding when he uses them—and then there’s only the pixane left, which he wears over a tight long-sleeved shirt that disappears into his trousers. 

Or, as the woman who made them for him called them, traditional jodhpurs. It doesn’t matter what they are, though, because Harry loves the trousers. Flared around his thighs like regular sweatpants but laced tight from ankle to calf. They’re great because it means he’s not struggling with the hems, tripping over the extra material left and right. Sadly, getting into these trousers is easier than getting out.

When he looks over, Draco’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, watching him avidly. “What?” Harry asks.

Draco shrugs. “It’s just odd, I guess. All these people… I’ve never seen them in anything but the things that are available here. But you—yeah, that’s strange. Seeing you with armour, for God’s sake.”

Harry sits down on the bed to undo the knots at the base of his ankles. He pulls at the laces, loosening them and testing to see if his foot fits through. Not yet. “Speaking of, did Bones say when your new gear is finished?”

“Two days,” Draco says and he gets up from the bed. “She said she’ll send me a message when she’s done. It’ll depend on her other commissions.” 

“Busy gal,” Harry comments absently. “We’re lucky she refused to join the other guilds.”

“How’s that?”

Harry hums and works on the other leg. “If she worked for Hogwarts or the Order, she wouldn’t be able to help us. There’s a couple of high skilled blacksmiths around but they’re working exclusively for the front lines. Players like us have to rely on what they call hobbyists. Technically Bones isn’t, she’s from Hufflepuff, but still.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Way it is. Nothing to be done about it.” Harry fiddles with the laces, not looking up. “Your clothes. They’re the starter set, yeah? They slow you down.” He grabs his wrist and squeezes softly as he thinks of how to say what he wants to say but the absence of anything except that vague sense of discomfort makes him drop his wrist pretty quick. “If you team up with someone stronger, you can do some grinding on the second floor. There’s a spawning site that gives great EXP and money around your level, and they’re not too dangerous if you’re in a group.” He imagines his mouth drying up as he waits for a response, but all he gets is a questioning grunt. “Rewards are split between team members, right? So you can kind of piggyback your way to a higher level until you can safely help out.”

Draco throws his shirt at Harry’s head. “Interesting,” is all he says.

Harry wiggles out of his jodhpurs and returns them to his inventory. He gets to his feet, naked except for the boxers plastered to his hips like a second skin. The body he’s looking down at isn’t the way he remembers it, even though logically he knows it is.

“Just let me get in a few attacks of my own, okay.”

Harry can do that.

* * *

Falling into rest with another player around is easy when he’s in a green-zone. They can’t mug him, they can’t injure him and best of all, can’t kill him. Perfect. Resting is a lot like slumbering, there and not, a prolonged daydream where the dream is a darkness that fades in and out of focus. He’s aware of his body in a way that would hinder him during wakefulness, trying to get a feel for his limbs.

Harry concentrates hard on his fingers touching the sheet beneath him. He thinks it would feel soft and cold, and if he were to press down, he would feel the thin resting mat. He tries to remember how his mattress felt, something he used to take for granted, or how it felt to touch his own skin.

He thinks he remembers getting feedback from two different places at once and knowing where it was coming from. How it was different from touching objects, how objects would have that one-sided feel to them, fingertips white for just that second after pushing them harshly against his kitchen counter. 

Harry scratches his nails down his stomach and tries to feel anything other than pressure.

This isn’t real, he reminds himself. Even if it looks like it on the surface, even if they pretend to need things they truly don’t, they’re not real.

* * *

Harry’s timer goes off at six. He blinks himself into focus but doesn’t sit up, turns around instead to stare at the side of the bed. Draco’s breathing slow and heavy and Harry wonders what it was like for him, where he normally stays. Does he only use his weapon out of necessity, when food or money, or both, is running low? Level and the state of his gear seem to suggest so but Harry can’t just assume things. Or, well, he tries not to.

“She saw me first. Recognised me, right after the announcement,” Draco speaks into the silence. “We didn’t know anyone else, so we just—stuck together. When we got split up, we’d just arrived in Velia. We wanted to check out those wizards in Hogsmeade. Some girl told us she knew a great spot and there was another small group of players who were interested, so we thought—we thought there were so many of us, you know? So we teamed up.”

Oh.

“They were waiting for us when we got there. Called her green bait, job well done, let her and her little friend go.” Draco gulps. “We—er—we tried to fight them off but by the time those girls came back with backup, we were separated and I was the only one left in my group. Couldn’t see or hear the others. She wasn’t in my party to begin with, so I—yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hid. Behind a tree. Waited until everyone was gone, and then I went looking for her. Sent her a few messages. I thought, maybe she’d return. That’d be rational. That’s what I would’ve done. So I kind of hung around for a bit. For longer than I should. And then, I don’t know when, but I got this error message in my inbox. User no longer available.”

Harry clears his throat. “That doesn’t mean anything,” he says, uncharacteristically optimistic. He thinks it means exactly what Draco already thinks it does and he feels a pang of hurt for his old classmate, a girl, woman now, who might have been a good friend had things gone differently. “You get that message when someone deletes you from their list. It doesn’t mean they’re dead. Doesn’t have to mean she is.” He decides that Draco should know this regardless. 

Draco makes an aborted noise. “But I don’t know if that’s _worse_.”


	4. Episode 2.5

Unlocked: 17

Location: Calpheon City, Calpheon

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 45

Heirlomes LV. 29

Draco is an absolute disaster. He finally has pets now that loot for him, so there’s that. Of course, he splurged and now has the highest tier possible, but at least he’s not boasting about that too much. Now that he knows what is useful and what isn’t, he doesn’t seem to care about funds. Harry’s sure he bought most of the outfits available for some reason—it’s not like he can wear more than one at a time, although in the most recent update they added the ability to mix and match. Important.

Once more they’re at the premium shop, because Draco’s convinced he wants to upgrade his mace from a +10 to +11. Each failed attempt lowers the max durability, from 100 all the way down to 0, and Draco wants to cheese it by buying repair stones. They drop in-game as well so they’re on the player market but with how many you need you’re better off buying them in the premium store if you can afford it.

Lord knows Malfoy can afford it.

“I’m just—going to grab some logs,” Harry says, watching Draco flit around the store, looking like he’s very much in his element. 

“Okay.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Harry repeats tonelessly, and then he leaves him to it. With how happy Draco is buying everything under the sun, he’ll have to be careful not to mention his own rather low durability on his gear. 

Unlike Draco, he has to grind for them and save up funds to repair his gear, especially his weapon. It’s at +15 finally, and he’s sure he’s one of the few with a weapon at that level, but it’s sitting at a meagre 20/100 durability. It’ll be a while before he’ll attempt a +16 upgrade. Well, he won’t be upgrading it himself. He’ll bring the materials to a blacksmith and ask them, as they have a higher chance of success, and the same goes for repairing a piece.

His cat pet runs ahead and meows at a diorite rock that Harry’s too lazy to grab his pickaxe for. It lights up slightly red. He passes it, and the cat stares at him as he does, but Harry ignores it easily. Warehouse Square is packed as usual, the front entrance to the building blocked by two carriages. He goes left, following the curve of the road south east onto what players have taken to calling Stall Street; it’s a long street with a lot of market stalls and NPCs selling wares.

Instead of following Stall Street, however, he crosses the bridge to go further south. He probably should’ve taken a horse, because it’s quite the walk from Calpheon Market all the way in the north to the stables in the south. He raises his hand to greet a few passersby, recognising them from the grinding spots he frequents.

Once he has his horse, he decides to continue on foot. He’s already where he wants to be, which is the North Kaia forest. He wants fir logs and planks, and while there are other spots to grab it, most people prefer to go to the Balenos region, Harry has come here enough to develop a rotation. The horse is for when he has to go back to Warehouse Square.

For some reasons, fir is one of the more expensive types of wood. It has something to do with a trade skill but Harry doesn’t have time to look into that, so he sticks to gathering logs and planks, among a myriad of other things, for the higher guilds.

* * *

Unlocked: 17

Location: Southern Neutral Zone, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 45

Heirlomes LV. 30

When Harry first powered up the NerveGear, it asked him for his preferred language and gave him a warning that he had to log out in order to change it again. The list wasn’t incredibly long, only the usual suspects present. Naturally, he chose English, and so the NPCs speak to him in English and his menu is in English, perfect. 

But it didn’t take long to sink in that not everyone speaks English or the little bit of German he can understand—High School does _not_ prepare you for a native speaker in an informal setting, thanks—and it makes communicating difficult, especially if you need something from them.

“You’re in our spot!” Draco yells, waving his arms around while the player in front of them just looks confused and a little bit angry. “Mobs!” He points at the newly spawned Red Orcs to their left. “Ours!” He points at himself. “ _Not_ yours!” He shakes his fist at the three teenagers.

Harry shakes his head and leans heavily on his glaive. “This isn’t going to work,” he tells Draco, “and screaming at him isn’t going to make him understand you any better. To him you’re only a moron flailing around.”

“Either get your arse off the bench and do your magic thing here or _shut_ up,” Draco says.

“Try Spanish?” Harry suggests, highly amused. Privately he thinks they should just let the kids have this spawning site, but Draco’s indignation is a pretty damn funny thing to watch.

Draco huffs, gives a few halting words, and the larger kid unleashes a torrent of what does sound a lot like Spanish upon them. Harry’s skills don’t extend past greetings, basic pronouns, sorry, thanks, kill, die and being able to count to ten, unless they use other obvious cognates like ‘monster’ and ‘quest’.

“I think they’re on a quest,” Harry comments idly. “Seriously, though, _look_ at their gear.”

“No one took pity on me when I was walking around like that,” Draco says.

Harry straightens and stretches. “I took pity on you. C’mon, Draco, let’s go. Maybe in another month they’ll find themselves in a reversed situation and take the high road, too.”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Pay it forward, huh? Finally found your heart?” he snarks.

Harry pushes him toward the dirt path with a quick goodbye thrown over his shoulder at the bemused teens. “Something like that,” he says dismissively. More like _not discouraging players from levelling_ because there will never be too many high level players around. “We should be getting back anyway, Helga is waiting.”

“She’s the one who wears her cape like a headscarf, right?”

Harry says, “No, that’s Rowena,” and waits tensely for Draco to showcase once again how much insensitive arseholery there is hidden underneath his pretty exterior. Harry might have considered him attractive if he wasn’t also acutely aware of the guy’s shortcomings.

(No, that wasn’t quite true.)

Draco surprises him for now. “Okay. That’s cool, I suppose.”

Apparently it’s _cool._

* * *

Unlocked: 17

Location: Keplan, Calpheon

Server: Calpheon 8

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 45

Heirlomes LV. 30

It takes them an hour to get to Keplan, a smallish village in the middle of Calpheon, just below Calpheon City. It’s a bit of a hilly area and the safe-zones don’t extend further than the boundaries of towns. Rowena is one of about twenty players living in Keplan on the server. They don’t get much traffic since there generally isn’t a reason to visit the place, so it’s quiet, and Harry can see why they’d want to stay here.

The first time Draco met Rowena, he stuck his foot pretty far up his mouth by saying, “I didn’t know women were allowed to game.” Harry had slunk away in shame and proceeded to deny knowing him for the three hours they were there, one of which Draco spent listening—attentively, Harry has to give credit where it’s due—to a very patient but firm lecture about stereotypes.

Harry had offered to leave him behind next time, but Rowena said something about re-education being a process that took time and tears and they had nothing but, so Harry drags Draco with him this week too. Rowena hasn’t been around a lot lately, though, but she’s waiting for them in front of the inn, waving at them—or at Harry, at least, she’s still not too keen on Draco—when she spots them.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a trader,” Rowena chuckles as they shake hands.

Harry grimaces, offended. He supports the front line guilds because it’s the right thing to do, not because of profit, but even though he only takes minimum payment, he’s still one of the wealthiest players. Connections and reputation helped him a lot in acquiring bulk deals for them. Being called a trader is insulting, it implies he does it only to fill his own pockets, as though he doesn’t fund projects left and right.

Rowena knows it too. “Yes, that’s why I said if I didn’t know better.”

She leads them through to the back of the inn and out onto a courtyard where a group of nine players sit in a circle on the grass. They’re all hooded, with only their guild emblems blazing next to their cursor that tells them apart. 

Despite the hoods, they don’t seem too concerned with keeping their identities a secret. Harry knows their IGNs, he’d be pretty useless without those. According to Helga, they keep their hoods up because, “It’s almost like we’re spies, like we have secret identities.”

Helga, Rowena and Salazar are the only guild leaders at these meetings, the rest all regular members of the higher guilds. Sometimes Fawkes, guild leader of Hogwarts, sends Hedwig but usually she’s too busy so he sends a random person. Dumbledore, guild leader of the Order, usually sends one of his newest recruits.

Harry sits close to Draco, hand planted in the grass behind him as a quiet gesture of support and to hopefully keep him calm long enough to get through this part. It’s interesting how their roles have switched. Harry used to be the hotheaded of the two, easily baited by Draco, and now Draco’s positively flammable.

“Orange!” Helga greets happily without looking up from the block of wood in her lap. She blows on it gently, scattering the wood shavings, and continues working on it with what Harry thinks is a scalpel but might be something else entirely. Woodcarving isn’t an official skill as far as they know, but it’s interesting that the game has certain things built in anyway.

Harry has to reach across with his left hand to open his menu. “Oh, by the way, have you heard about this guild down on Balenos 1? They call themselves Pixies? They’ve started charging people for entering Heidel. They won’t let you in if you’re not paying up.”

Helga looks up at that. “I heard about that, yes. Have you tried it, entering without paying?”

“We didn’t personally,” Draco replies, “but we’ve heard others who did. They said those Pixies players have stationed guards around the entrances and they just force you outside the green-zone if you’re unwilling to pay up.”

“Is he serious?” Dumbledore’s representative speaks up, looking at Harry.

Draco balls his fists, instantly on the defensive. “Are you asking me if I’m lying?”

Harry leans in and presses his fingers into Draco’s skin as a warning, tips disappearing underneath the hem of his dark shirt.

“I’m sure he’s just expressing surprise at the news,” Rowena says sharply. “We’re aware of the Pixies. General consensus is that if they stay on the Balenos servers, no one’s got a problem with them. They can have them.”

“Yeah, except the players stuck with them,” someone else mutters.

Salazar rolls his eyes. “Please, Wood, they’re non-players. It was their decision to hang out in Balenos and Serendia indefinitely. Remember, the Pixies only hold Olvia, Velia and Heidel hostage. They just sit there, doing nothing. They made their bed, now they gotta lie in it. Are you _concerned_?”

It’s a trick question.

Draco grabs Harry’s thigh and holds on tight. Harry silently wraps his fingers around Draco’s and prays the guy has the sense to keep quiet. Badmouthing non-players is a great bonding experience according to the high levelled players and sticking up for them is considered pretty bad form. Harry used to take part in it, used to agree with it, until Draco told him a bit of what it was like, and that shut him up pretty quick. 

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t still resent them for their inaction.

Wood snorts. “Of course not, I just don’t want us to miss out on non-players who’ve had a change of heart,” he says.

“You’re way ahead of the facts, Wood,” Rowena says. “They aren’t some totalitarian force keeping anyone from exiting the region. The Pixies robbing players by forcing them to pay doesn’t mean they’ll become one, either. It’s just a bunch of greedy non-players bullying their own kind.”

Harry sucks on his upper lip to keep from chuckling despite himself, squeezes Draco’s hand instead.

“I’d say good riddance and leave the arseholes contained to the earlier regions,” Davis says. “Council knows what’s up.”

“Hear hear,” someone laughs.

Helga looks unhappy with all of them but keeps quiet. She’s the only one who won’t badmouth them, but she never calls them out on it either. Then again, neither does Harry. It seems only Draco’s frustrated with them enough to open his mouth, although luckily enough he’s not saying anything now.

“So! Does anyone want to hear what Heirlooms and I brought for you or are we going to keep pissing on non-players?” Harry interrupts before someone else can jump in, because they will keep going, a never ending source of entertainment.

Rowena coughs. “Of course. By all means, Orange.”

The fact that the higher guilds consider themselves either too busy or too important to go resource hunting works out as a blessing for Harry. It makes them part with money they could’ve spent otherwise, but Harry’s not complaining. He’s also not telling them where the money goes, thanks. If they ascribe the influx of mid-level players willing to help out the mob lines to the arrival of the Pixies, he’s not going to correct them.

Harry divides the resources he set apart for them by nine while Draco opens his own inventory tab to check. “Alright. Smithies first.”

Davis sends him a trade request.

* * *

Dealing with the high guilds’ representatives reminds Harry that Draco’s brand of cultural unawareness isn’t the only brand of insensitivity to be found in H:CoS. When all the other hang-ups ceased to matter in the face of a common enemy, the players invented something else to be exclusive and prissy about: non-players.

In the beginning it only encompassed the players who kept to their cheap rooms in Olvia and Velia, so far removed from the front lines that they might as well be dead. And then it extended to include the players who only skilled cooking and fishing and hiding, but never smithing, though, because smithing was useful.

And _now_.

Well, Harry and Draco aren’t directly involved with the front lines, or members of any of the guilds represented in front of them, for that matter. In fact, Harry stays far away from them. Before Harry threw a whole lot of money at him, Draco was the very essence of a non-player. The difference is that now he’s a high-levelled non-player who’s hiding in plain sight. 

Harry is just glad the high guilds haven’t yet realised that they’ve been treating him as an equal.

 _Now_ he’s waiting for that to change.

* * *

_Level Unlocked: 18_

The message pops up less than a minute after he sets foot within the Calpheon City green-zone. It makes him slightly uncomfortable, to know that while they were sitting there on the grass laughing at and with each other, other players had been risking their lives. Some of them probably died, too. Was he laughing when that happened? Or maybe he was reversing a trade that went wrong, taking the jokes about counting not being a recognised skill in stride. Maybe they were already on their way back to the main settlement.

When he looks to the side, Draco doesn’t seem too concerned with it, dismissing the window and pulling Harry along toward the plaza when he takes too long to move on his own. He’s humming a song, one Harry doesn’t recognise. but the tune sounds melancholic. 

Harry misses music. 

He misses being able to taste his food. 

He misses home.


	5. Episode 3

Unlocked: 33

Location: Valencia City, Valencia

Server: Valencia 2

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 54

Heirlomes LV. 46

Some of the biggest guilds have their Guild House in Velia, closest town to Hogwarts and its dungeon entrance deep within the castle. It has a fishing dock and a ferry to the many islands in the north of Balenos. It only stays in place for half an hour before leaving, passengers or not, and Harry thinks of it more like a ghostship than anything else.

There are a lot of ferries leaving from Velia, going all around the mainland and there’s a hot air balloon as well. It’s the ferry going from Ancado Harbour to Velia that Harry is most interested in right now, Draco on his heels.

They just dropped off a large batch of logs and planks to help the Hufflepuff guild, the server’s main guild, work on their own Guild House, which they are building in Valencia City of all places. It makes a little bit of sense, Hufflepuff has a mix of professions rather than concentrated on one or two, and Valencia City is close enough, definitely closer than Velia, to some of the best grinding spots for their fighters and some rare ingredients for the cooks.

Draco is still figuring out how far away he should stay from mobs before he pulls aggro, which he showcases when they pass three lions and immediately gets attacked by the biggest of them. He’s also still getting used to being able to actually kill them.

“You know you just ruined someone’s rotation, right?” Harry asks with a laugh as he watches Draco kill two of the three and dodges far away enough for him to lose aggro on the third.

“They’ll manage,” Draco sniffs haughtily.

But other than a hiccup here or there, Draco proves to be an apt student. He should have known this from their days at school, but for some reason he can’t consolidate the student he knew with the man he travels the regions with. The blond’s combat level creeps closer ever so slowly, although his lifeskill levels aren’t anything to write home about.

They should’ve brought their horses, Harry thinks, disgruntled because the walk to Ancado Harbour takes longer than he thought. They break off of the main route for a shortcut through dry bushes and past lions and a scorpion here or there. They’re easily taken care of and mostly ignored by Harry, although Draco makes it a sport to kill everything he sees just for the cooking ingredients if there are any. His warehouse must be near full by now with all the different kinds of meat and bones he picks up along the way.

They hop back to their main server while they wait for the ferry to come, and immediately after their arrival on Serendia 4 someone calls Harry’s nickname. Not his IGN like a normal person, or a variant of it, no, none of that. “Orange!” someone yells from the balcony of one of the houses on the higher platform of Ancado Harbour. 

Harry hates himself a little for feeling addressed and turning around. “What!” he calls back just as loudly. It’s not his fault he’s the first well-known player with an orange cursor, is it. Already he walks the steps up to the platform overlooking the rest of the harbour. “What,” he says again, standing near the balcony.

The player disappears inside, then shortly after opens the front door. He leans against the jamb, arms crossed. “Hi,” he says. Large red feathers cover most of his body except his hands, his ankle boots and his face. Even his blond hair has a few feathers woven in. But even with feathers obscuring part of his face, he’s still devastatingly handsome.

“Hi, Fawkes,” Harry says with a helpless smile.

Beside him, Draco straightens at recognising the name. He, like Harry and many others, turned off the option to see a player’s username hover. A coloured cursor and a guild emblem along with the guild’s name is the only thing that now hovers above players for them. It’s a lot less distracting.

While there are 45 servers, most active players only frequent eight of them, those with the front line guilds. Only around 16,500 players are left from the initial 20,000, and about 10% of those left are actively playing (according to Harry’s standards), the other 90% sticking to towns and safe passages in fear of going blue.

Fawkes is one of the more well-known guild leaders, his guild Hogwarts the largest in-game with four daughter guilds, ruling on Serendia 4. He’s a handsome man, with a sharp jawline and chiselled cheeks and a pair of stunning baby-blues—Harry couldn’t stand the sight of him at first. He hadn’t known Fawkes’ personally at the time and he’d not been interested either. People like him, they get everything thrown at them in life without working for it, they have _everything_ going for them and they know it.

That was before they got lost in the desert together and Fawkes kept Harry alive with expensive potions and meals, going through piles of galleons until he had only knuts left. Four months later and despite his misgivings about friendships, Harry can’t imagine _not_ being friends with the man, although more often than not he wonders why Fawkes is friends with _him_ —people like that don’t befriend people like him, they exist in a different world altogether.

“I didn’t know you lived here,” Harry comments, leaning on his glaive and trying to focus on anything but his stupidly beautiful face.

“What can I say,” Fawkes says with a disarming smile, “I like the quiet. Not many people bother coming here.”

“Calpheon 3 has a whole group that moved to Valencia together,” Draco says. “Some of them settled in the harbour.”

Fawkes turns to him with a dry expression. “Calpheon 3,” he repeats. “Calpheon who?”

Draco flushes. 

Honestly, he should’ve known better; none of the Calpheon servers have a high guild. Harry hides his smirk behind the back of two fingers. “You’re plenty out of the way, that’s for sure,” he says, deftly avoiding opening _that_ particular can of worms.

The older man nods toward the docks where a large ship is already waiting. “Where are you heading?”

“Just Velia.”

“Just Velia, hmm?”

Harry sighs. Denying Fawkes anything is hard work. “Hufflepuff needed some help with their house,” he tells the man. “I saw some of yours as well.”

“Mine?” Fawkes raises his chin, tilting his head with interest. “Oh?” He rubs his lower lip with his pointy finger. “I don’t remember sending any.”

Draco looks unhappy. “They need your permission?”

“I’d like to know where they are.” 

Harry notes it’s not a _no_ , but Fawkes’ guild is one of the first ones and one of the strongest, and their buddy-system saved quite a few lives, especially in the beginning. Somehow in the three months since they’ve been together, Draco has never met Fawkes before. Odd, but then, it’s not like they do _everything_ together. To think of it, was Draco even aware that Fawkes and Harry are friends? It never came up, he realises.

The time for introductions has passed, but it’s weirder not doing it, isn’t it? “Fawkes, this is Draco,” he says awkwardly.

Draco’s unhappy look darkens further and Harry has no idea why.

“Draco, meet Fawkes, GM of Hogwarts.”

Fawkes smirks. “Pleasure.”

“I’m sure,” Draco sneers.

Harry feels like he’s missing something, like he’s done something wrong, made a misstep somewhere in this interaction, but neither seems inclined to help him out. Well then, suit yourself, he thinks exasperatedly.

A loud horn sounds in the distance. “Shit, our ferry,” he exclaims. 

They narrowly make it onto the ferry already leaving the docks.

Fucking Fawkes.

* * *

Unlocked: 33

Location: Calpheon City, Calpheon

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 54

Heirlomes LV. 46

Harry doesn’t bother getting out of his clothes, just takes off his boots and his armour and leaves them in their usual places on the always-present desk underneath the window. At least the curtains are yellow in this inn, which is a change, and there are tulips in a rather ugly vase on the sill. Perhaps the rooms get better the more dungeon levels they’ve unlocked, because he doesn’t remember those tulips being there before.

Draco disappears into the bathroom without closing the door and predictably turns on the shower as far it will go in heat and pressure. It’ll feel like nothing more than a light drizzle, Harry knows, a hint of lukewarm water despite the steam that quickly fills their room. It merely serves to remind Harry that this isn’t real, even if remembering his memories so many times has given them a hazy layer, even if he isn’t sure he could point out what _is_ real.

The mattress dips beneath his weight when he lowers himself on it. He feels nothing as he crawls under the blankets, wonders if he should be uncomfortable with his clothes on in bed. He thinks it used to be, but it doesn’t feel different here.

Draco re-enters the room, his black clothes still drenched from his shower. They’ll dry up fast now that he’s out, probably within the next minute or so. He lays down on his sleeping mat.

Harry swallows. “Are you—” He breaks off. “Are you uncomfortable?” he whispers. He doesn’t know what he wants the answer to be, doesn’t know where he’s going with it. “The bed is—it’s pretty comfortable.” It’s just like any other bed in H:CoS. “You don’t have sheets and I do, so—so we could. If you want.”

“What exactly are you asking me, Harry?” Draco says, sounding only a little bit amused.

“Don’t leave,” Harry hears himself saying from afar, already three sentences ahead in a conversation they haven’t had yet and that might not happen either. He exhales carefully when Draco crawls over him and into the bed, stretching himself out alongside Harry’s back. “I mean it,” Harry says as he pulls the covers back up.

Draco wiggles closer so he can wrap himself around Harry. “I know,” he says against the collar of Harry’s shirt. “We have to stick together.” 

Harry imagines his heartbeat slowing as he calms down. _We’re on our own here_ , he doesn’t say. Doesn’t need to, really, because whatever they used to be, school rivals hating each other’s guts, it doesn’t matter in the face of this. There is no point worrying about _before_ when they’re not even sure there’s going to be an _after_. Maybe _this_ is their _after_.

He grabs Draco’s hand and presses it to his covered stomach. A low satisfied noise escapes him that would have embarrassed him if he wasn’t so utterly content right now. “We should’ve done this earlier,” he murmurs. Harry is self-aware enough to know he doesn’t do well on his own, that knowing another person— whom he is comfortable with, thank you— is nearby has a strange way of grounding him.

“I missed holding someone like this,” Draco confesses.

Harry hums in agreement. “Four months,” he replies thoughtlessly.

“What?” Draco asks, leaning up.

It takes Harry a moment to realise what he’s asking about and when it finally occurs to him, he tries not to flinch. His arm jerks anyway, jostling Draco’s and making him lose his balance. Harry turns and lies on his back, waits for words to present themselves while Draco squirms on top of him. “Four months,” he ends up repeating. He clears his throat. “It was just comfort.”

“I’m not judging.”

Longbottom had been just that—comfort. They’d been friends, he was Harry’s first friend in this godforsaken place, but reds… there’s a reason Harry’s cursor is orange for the foreseeable future, who knows how long it’ll take for it to go back to green, if ever. Killing in self-defence, kill or be killed, to him it was all the same. One player went blue and one player went red, simple as that. Simple as murder.

There’s still doubt lingering inside Harry’s chest, the persistent idea that he has a need to defend himself, that by seeking comfort the way he does means he’s betraying a promise that he never even made in the first place. There is nobody that he’s betraying, not truly, _and yet_. 

They’d been working toward it, moving toward it at a snail’s pace but moving there regardless. It’s all gone now, it’s not here. 

Here is _Draco_ , not—

“I’m sorry,” Harry says following a short silence, thinking of dark curls and silver eyes, and even though Draco’s lips brush his shoulder in acknowledgement as he settles in for the night, it’s not Draco who is the intended recipient. But it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t.

* * *

Unlocked: 39

Location: Calpheon City, Calpheon

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 58

Heirlomes LV. 52

Draco is running himself into the ground.

Harry didn’t notice it, at first, partly because Draco outright lied when Harry asked about the speedy levelling. Was Harry doing something wrong, was it just the monsters who happened to be giving a ton of EXP because Draco had a lower level, was it some kind of equipment bonus? After hitting level 50, levelling becomes a horrible process, making very little progress in a lot of time. Yes, Draco had non-answered with a straight face.

No. 

Because Draco has taken to sneaking out in the middle of the night. Maybe it’s because they haven’t stopped sharing a bed that Harry has finally noticed, coming out of his rest with a frown because he’s able to turn around in the cramped space without Draco pinning him down. 

Harry knows what it’s like to go without rest. Remembers the buzzing in his head and the vague sense of voices, mind never shutting up. always wondering _what if what if what if_ , rage a rolling boil. He doesn’t want Draco to implode the way he himself had. H:CoS isn’t a place that appreciates purposelessness so it should be more than reasonable for Harry to put to use the one useless thing he’s allowed himself to have. 

That’s not to say he doesn’t understand the anger fuelling Draco, but he needs the guy clearheaded. Going without rest for so long is not constructive to survival. He can’t exactly force Draco to stay put, though he can—

Harry doesn’t know what he can do, how he can help. There was no one around to help him when he went off the rails, not until a month later when Davis cussed him out with very colourful language and punched him in the face, “Because your lacklustre attitude is grating on my nerves. Oh please, it’s not like you could actually feel that.” It helped, he thinks, because she called him out on behaviour he hadn’t been aware of.

He sets out to wait. His clock says it’s 2 PM, so he pulls up his settings window and plays around with it while he waits. A half hour later and Harry’s bored with it since it’s not like he actually wants to change his settings after spending an entire day customising everything to his liking.

He ends up spending some quality time staring at the ceiling instead, noting the details the designers put into it. He could actually count the little dots in the plaster. He thinks of the fact Draco still showers with his clothes on, the fact he himself hates taking his gloves off. 

They’re both messed in the head, he thinks.

Draco slinks into the room wearing socks, a boot in each hand, head hung low. The idea that he thinks he needs to hide this for whatever reason both saddens and angers Harry. Does he not trust Harry? Is he ashamed? Is he doing things he shouldn’t be? Draco closes the door behind softy and sets his boots down against the wall, unaware of the concerned stare thrown his way. Harry opens his mouth to say something but Draco chooses that moment to lean back against the door, hands buried in his hair. He slides down to the floor with a barely audible noise, face pressed against his pulled up knees.

Harry clenches his gloved hands into fists and closes his eyes. He tries to breathe quietly and find his way back into rest because he can’t. He can’t watch, can’t listen, can’t do anything other than lie there and try to tune it all out, perhaps wait until a better opportunity, when Draco doesn’t look ten seconds away from breaking down.

* * *

There’s a message waiting for him from Ikram. It’s been sitting in his inbox for two days already and he has yet to open it. It’s bad form, he knows that. It could be urgent, for all he knows. It could also very well not be, so he lets it sit there while he goes about his daily business. Most of it involves, as Bones put it, sticking his nose into places it doesn’t belong. Personally, Harry prefers to call it networking, but that doesn’t mean Bones isn’t right.

Harry tries and fails to keep to the edges of the player community, but if he also wants to support the front line guilds, he can’t have it both ways.

With a last glance at the form huddling pathetically on the floor near the door that hasn’t moved since he got up from the bed and got dressed, Harry opens the message. Reading it, he feels silly for not doing so sooner.

  
  


**From User: Rowena**

_I heard the Order is going to approach you and your boy soon..._

_Remember you can say no! I called dibs months ago :)_

~Rowena, GM of Ravenclaw

  
  


Harry doesn’t really see the need to add anything fancy as an automated postscript, but he gets why she would, why others would do it. Rowena didn’t use to have one, until recently it seems. Harry hasn’t been in contact with her beyond their weekly meetings, and those have been the same for months so he hasn’t had a reason to send her a message yet.

  
  


**To User: Rowena**

_still not interested._

_gm of ravenclaw?_

~RedNGold

**From User: Rowena**

_Morning, Orange! I’m great, thanks for asking..._

_GM = Guild Master? What do you mean?_

~Rowena, GM of Ravenclaw

  
  


Harry snorts.

  
  


**To User: Rowena**

_i know what it means jfc... i meant what’s with the new sig?_

~RedNGold

**To User: Rowena**

_i’m sure everyone knows you’re ravenclaw’s gm by now._

~RedNGold

**From User: Rowena**

_You’d think!!_

~Rowena, GM of Ravenclaw

**From User: Birdsong**

_You’re distracting my GM ;)_

~Fawkes

**To User: Birdsong**

_no u._

~RedNGold

Harry dismisses his menu and walks over to Draco. “Get up,” he says, “time to go, we have things to do.” Guilds to avoid, like the Order of the Phoenix, who he is definitely not interested in joining, not now, not ever. Together with the Death Eaters, who are full guild of mostly reds, and Gryffindor and Slytherin, they make up the majority of the combatants on the front lines. Harry has watched them grind from a distance, reluctantly impressed but becoming increasingly wary of their attitude, more determined to stay out of their way.

Things are fine as they are, there is no need for change. 

Harry doesn’t like change.

“Draco, c’mon, let’s go.” He pulls on Draco’s arm until he finally gets his feet under him and stands up. “Please don’t look at me like that,” he adds.

Draco shrugs and grimaces. “How am I looking at you?”

“Like you—” _have given up_ “—are blaming me for this,” Harry says.

“What, want me to smile?” He pulls his lips back in a snarl. “There, happy?”

Harry wants to respond but draws a blank, has no idea what to do with this. This is probably a moment where they should sit down and talk but what should he even say? “Did something happen?” he finds himself asking cautiously but he doesn’t want to know.

“What are we doing?” Draco asks in return. He pushes off against the wall until they’re chest to chest, until Harry has to look up slightly to keep their eyes locked.

“I was thinking we’d go back to C—”

“No, you idiot,” he says tightly, “I meant, what are we _doing_?”

Ah. “So something did happen?” Harry’s fingers twitch. “Draco, why are you sneaking out?”

Draco purses his lips. “Someone approached me. They called me a non-player. They said—they said some things, and I—” He breaks off and looks away for a moment. “There’s nothing wrong with refusing to play, there isn’t. If I didn’t—if—and you know, I value my life, everyone here does, whether they play or not. But the people we hang out with. Harry, they make me _hate_ myself. I went down to Olvia and I looked around and I kept thinking how _worthless_ they are, and it makes me hate myself because I was like that, too.”

“But that’s why we go there, to help them out.”

“And it’s not enough, Harry. Why aren’t we doing something? Why do you—why do we keep doing quests and levelling up when we’re not doing something useful with it? Won’t that help them too? I asked one of the front liners what her level was, and she’s lower than ours. Most of them are.”

“Yes,” Harry says slowly, “because they are in groups.”

“Groups that are trying to beat the game.” Draco shakes his head and steps away. “Unlike us.”

“So what are you saying here? Because I don’t think I understand. Players make you hate yourself but you want to join them anyway? We’re on the mob lines when they need us, we’ve been getting resources for them so they’re never long with broken equipment, we help them advance. We’re already helping them.”

Draco takes a deep breath. “I want to join the front lines.”

_No_.

* * *

Friendship has no place in H:CoS.

* * *

Harry doesn't say, _getting yourself killed on the front lines won't bring our lives back_. He doesn’t say, _getting yourself killed on the front lines won’t bring Hermione back_. He just says, “If that’s what you want, then you should do it,” he says, voice steady despite the buzzing in his head and the voice that viciously screams, _I told you so_.

“ _I_ should,” Draco repeats, “so not we. Not us?”

Harry imagines his mouth drying up. “What _about_ us?” he says, tilting his chin up, as if he isn’t internally begging for everything to stop. He wants to lash out, angry and hurt and confused. “You already know what I think about joining the front lines,” he snaps. There’s plenty of other things that need to be done, the front lines are fine, there’s no reason for Harry or Draco to be there.

Draco spits out angrily, “I thought you were a team-player.”

“I thought we were going to stick together,” he returns swiftly.

“That’s why I want you to come with me.”

“You think I want to see you die?” Harry demands, irate and irrational. “You think I want to get a notification telling me user _Heirlomes_ is no longer available?” 

“You think I want to be stuck here?” Draco flails his arms in an angry gesture. “God, you’re a fucking piece of work, Harry. But you know what? Fine, you stay here and do your non-player thing and I’ll go help out where it actually matters.”

Harry feels something inside of him break and he just doesn’t understand but he knows that whatever is happening here is his own fault somehow. He crosses his arms defensively and doesn’t say, _you promised me_. “Fine,” he says tightly, tries to keep the rising panic out of his voice. When he lifts his hand to open up the menu, he sees it shaking. By the time Draco has his boots on, he lets his glove linger on the screen. “I don’t want you to go,” he says.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to stay,” the other man snaps.

“Okay,” Harry says. His shoulders drop but his finger is still pressed to the screen, unwilling to let go until he absolutely has to, until this entire thing is over and done with, until he knows where they stand—or where they don’t. “Okay.” 

“Fuck,” Draco sighs. A hand forces Harry to look up and away from the floor. “Harry, I owe you one. You’re a little—no, a _lot_ fucked up, but you helped me out, so I owe you one. Not everyone belongs on the front lines.”

That stings more than it should. “You do,” he says, although he’s not sure what he’s replying to exactly. The kiss that gets him is sweet enough it almost hurts, a gentle press of lips that’s barely there. He lets his arm drop to the side when Draco steps back but doesn’t spare the confirmation window a second glance. “Good luck, I guess.” He already knows what it says, anyway.

_Deletion confirmed. User_ Heirlomes _no longer appears in your friends list._

* * *

Harry had forgot what it was like to be alone.

He remembers now.

Except.

* * *

**To User: Birdsong**

_draco left._

~RedNGold

**To User: Brainy Bird**

_can i have a hug? :(_

~RedNGold


	6. Episode 3.5

Unlocked: 47

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Valencia 3

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 60

Harry waits for his cursor to change from orange to red as he checks his inventory, discarding the low level equipment immediately. He swallows thickly and rubs his gloved hand over his mouth. His cursor throbs a dull orange above his head. At least the term reds implies sin, right? Implies the flowing of blood, invisible as it is in here. Harry hates reds as much as anyone else does but defending himself against them still feels like murder.

Harry’s cursor doesn’t change but he thinks he’d have deserved it.

* * *

“Hello, Orange,” says the owner of the inn, a girl who goes by Lovegood and insists its a hotel. “When are you going to buy a house?”

Harry snorts and turns. “Getting sick of me?”

She waves that away. “I can’t sell rooms to players, you know,” she says, as airily as everything that comes out of her mouth. Harry likes her a lot.

“Yes?” he replies in confusion.

“But I’m thinking, perhaps you can rent, like an apartment.” She gives him a long look. “You could leave your things out, that’s easier, and it can’t get stolen. No need to pay for one night every time.” She shakes her head, long blond strands falling to the front. “I think you need a home.”

Harry smiles a little. “I have one,” he confesses, “I just don’t like it. It’s too big.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh? Did you buy it or with CP?”

“I bought it a while ago, remember when I dropped from the wealth rankings?”

“Yes,” she says happily, “it was quite the event.”

It was. Many thought he’d died. His inbox that week was full of people not on his friends list sending him messages with just ‘test’ in it, to check if his username was still in use. “I bought that big house near the marketplace here, kicked quite a few people out, but…” He shrugged. It was his now, three stories high, two bedrooms and a wide open living room overlooking the plaza. He spent most of his galleons but it’d been worth it, being able to dump some of his inventory. It’s just that his house is so empty, he barely has furniture, he hasn’t got around to checking the marketplace for it yet.

He could always check the premium store, as everyone got about 100 pounds worth of premium cash on the 6 month anniversary of the game, along with another lootbox he has yet to open. Most people got worthless items from it anyway, upgrade stones flooding the market and making prices drop. He spent most of his leftover galleons on them, and now he’s just waiting for the prices to go back to normal.

It’ll be awhile before he hits the rankings again. 

Draco’s still on them, so there’s that.

Lovegood turns behind the bar, putting away the glasses she just dried. “Why are you still staying here? Do you need a bed? I have several, they don’t work as well as the premium ones.”

“Oh, you kept the old ones?” Harry sits down on one of the stools, accepting a glass of juice. “I thought you did away with them when you guys first got together to buy this place.” _This place_ being Heidel’s inn owned by the Ravenclaw guild on the Valencia 3 server, their home server.

Ravenclaw used to have issues hoarding knowledge, until around the four month mark when Rowena and even Fawkes got involved, finally kicking those that refused to play nice with the other guilds in their network. For a while afterwards, Hogwarts didn’t take any recruits from Ravenclaw and neither did the Order of the Phoenix, who tended to recruit from Hogwarts’ ranks but was known to make exceptions in promising cases.

Harry knows there’s a ticket with his name on it heading straight into the Order should he want to, but he’s still very much on the fence. It’s not that he dislikes or distrusts Dumbledore, that’s not the issue at all. It’s that he doesn’t want to get to know people, get invested in people’s progress, doesn’t want to start caring about people who might go blue. On the other hand, he’s about a level ahead of most, which used to be peanuts but now actually matters. It means he has access to skills they don’t. It means he has a large DEF boost they don’t, more HP and a higher attack in general. 

There are a few who make up for lack of stats with their upgraded gear, those who took risks getting their gear from +19 to +20 with only a 5% success rate and came out the good end. There’s only a few success stories, and Harry’d rather grind and gain stats that way than risk downgrading his gear that he worked hard for. He’s upgraded his to +19 and that’s the furthest he’s willing to go until he has a spare +19 piece that he can blow up. Going from +18 to +19 is only a 10% chance, so they’re hard to come by as is.

Gearing up is a pain, that’s for sure.

“Of course, they’re in guild storage but I’m sure if I ask an officer, you can have one.”

Harry winces. “Chang hates me now,” he mutters into his glass. “Might not want to ask her.”

Lovegood giggles. “Oh, Harry, I doubt that.”

It wasn’t his fault Chang has mistaken Harry’s favour-kisses for an advance. She’d been around him enough to know better, but somehow she still thought he was up for more than a chaste peck. It had been embarrassing for all parties involved.

“She may just agree out of embarrassment,” a new voice said, and both Lovegood and Harry turn to face Boot, one of Lovegood’s guildmates. He has a huge axe strapped to his back. Harry likes him just for not carrying a sword, honestly. 

“Oh, hush,” Lovegood says mildly, sliding a glass toward Boot.

Boot grins. “It was pretty funny, to be fair,” he whispers to Harry.

Harry takes a large gulp of juice to keep from responding. “It doesn’t matter, I have a bed,” he tells Lovegood after he sets down the empty glass. The juice had a vague hint of _something_ to it, but he can’t place what it was other than that it wasn’t tasteless. “I have two, actually.”

“What, expecting guests now?” Boot asks with a snort.

Harry rolls his eyes. “Hardly, but I need to fill the bedrooms with something, don’t I?” 

The one good thing about his house is the extra inventory space now that he can store a lot of extra equipment in the closet of one of the bedrooms. _His_ bedroom, but it doesn’t very much feel like his, mostly because he doesn’t know what makes a home.

The inn is filling up slowly now that the sun is setting. He hasn’t eaten yet, but he prefers eating at the inn next to Bones’ and Davis’ shop in Glish. Firstly because it’s his home server and secondly because that inn doesn’t get quite as much traffic as Ravenclaw’s inn does. 

He gets up, grabbing his trusty glaive, giving Lovegood a look. “You’re welcome to drop by,” he says, then points at Boot. “You, not so much.”

Boot laughs.

* * *

The first week or so, Harry felt lost without Draco, until he flipped a mental switch and felt a wave of acceptance. He was alone again, and that was fine. It had to be fine, after all. He regretted being so dramatic as to delete Draco from his friends list but he’s too stubborn to add him again. It feels too much like begging, so he soldiers on as is.

He easily went back to his old rhythm: grind most of the day, eat, rest 4-5 hours, eat again, gather until the sun comes up, eat once more and start over. The difference, however, is that now Harry takes time out of his day to visit those he considers friends, usually in the evenings, sharing dinner together. 

It’s been two months since Draco’s departure and about eight months or so since the game started. It feels like forever. Sometimes Harry has issues recalling life before this and he knows he’s not the only one, that this has become the new reality for a lot of people. It doesn’t help that the NerveGear now seems to have full access to their sense memories, so taste and touch are slowly returning to them. 

Getting whacked by a mob actually hurts a little now, more than just a ghostly pressure.

* * *

He walks the short distance from Heidel to Glish, drawing the hood of his cloak as he crosses the main bridge. It’s only half an hour, and he has the stamina to run a large part of it, but it’s a nice evening and the roads are part of the green-zones. There isn’t any hurry.

  
  


**From User: Bones**

_Your boy is looking for you._

~Susan, best unaligned blacksmith in town.

Glish 14, Serendia 4

  
  


It’s an old message, one he received two weeks ago. Harry keeps bringing it up, pondering how to respond, same as now. Finally he deletes the message and takes a lantern out of his inventory, keeping it in his offhand slot. He decides he’s just not going to respond.

If Draco truly wanted to find him, well, he’s really not that hard to find at all.

Draco could just visit Keplan during the weekly trades on Wednesdays. Or, if that wouldn’t work (but it would), he could’ve asked any mutual friend and been told he should visit Velia Beach on Friday evenings, when Harry’s fishing. Or that he should visit Ancado Harbour on Sunday mornings because Harry gets back late from meeting with his Valencia City contacts on Saturday evenings and he doesn’t want to travel all the way back to Heidel in the dark.

Harry’s predictable like that, has been for months, even when they were still together.

He arrives in Glish almost exactly half an hour after walking out of Ravenclaw’s inn, and as expected, the streets are fairly empty. He hops back to his home server, and while it’s a little more noisy, it’s not nearly as bad as Heidel is around this time of the day.

The restaurant he had in mind has only a handful of other customers, so he sits down in a corner booth, resting his back against the wall. There’s a waiter nearly immediately, and his food doesn’t take long to arrive either. He transfers the coins necessary then sips the brownish water they call coffee here. The taste is off, but the novelty of it having a taste still hasn’t lost its charm.

* * *

Unlocked: 47

Location: Glish, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 60

Heirlomes LV. 54

He doesn’t say anything when Draco sits down at his table. Harry lets the silence fester, not too concerned about it, and continues chewing on his dinner. He’s facing the window but watches Draco from the corner of his eye. It’s late now, dark outside, most players already resting, the plaza empty except for two NPC guards patrolling.

Draco says, “There’s nothing glorious in dying and I’m sorry I called you a coward for thinking otherwise.” It sounds rehearsed. He steals a piece of bread and breaks it apart. Actually, it sounds a lot like Davis’ interference.

Wordlessly, Harry types Draco’s username into the box above his friends list. It’s not that he doesn’t have anything to say, he just doesn’t know how to tell Draco that while he trusts the guy with his life, he doesn’t quite trust him with whatever else that leaves him. He gets up, half of the food uneaten.

His throat feels oddly tight when he finally opens his mouth. “I’m not going to ask you to stay,” he says before walking through the empty restaurant toward the narrow stairs leading to the inn’s rooms. The one he booked is on the second floor with a clear view of the little church and the server gate, the only room left available.

Draco follows him upstairs and waits until the door falls closed behind Harry before turning around and pulling him close. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it sounds like it takes him a lot to say the words, “I’m not going back unless you’re coming with me, I promise. I should’ve stayed, it was stupid.”

Harry keeps his arms down but can’t help himself from pushing his face against Draco’s turtleneck. “It doesn’t matter. Before is before.”

“But this isn’t before,” Draco says pointedly, “this is now.”

They’re not going to agree on this, they’re rapidly approaching another disagreement if they continue this conversation. “I have to rest,” he says instead. It’s not even a lie, his health is low enough he’s in the red and the cooldown on recovery potions is still going strong. If he wants to do anything at all tomorrow other than hang around in a town, he’ll need to start resting now.

* * *

“You owe me,” Harry reminds him with emphasis once they’re in bed. He pushes down on Draco’s shoulder until he rolls over onto his back. Harry leans up on his elbow. “You owe me,” he repeats, making sure that the other is listening because this is important, damnit, “yes or no?”

Draco moves his hand to where their stomachs are pressed together. “I suppose,” he says, voice tinged with uncertainty even as he grabs Harry’s waist.

“Not just I suppose, Draco, yes or no?”

“Fine. Yes, I owe you.”

“You do,” Harry agrees as if he hadn’t asked and then he kisses him. 

It’s meant to be brief, over in a second like he does for all the other favours he’s owed.

But this is Draco. 

Draco, who is a tactile person by nature, even more so than Harry himself is, who needs something else to focus on than the anger that probably courses through his veins at the unfairness of their situation. Despite knowing all of this, he’s still taken by surprise when Draco responds to the press of lips the way he does; pushing into it and following him with a cut off noise when Harry tries to pull back. 

“I didn’t mean you owe me a sexual favour,” Harry says. “That’s not what that was.”

Draco frowns at him. “I’m not stupid, Harry. I’ve seen you do the kissing-thing before, I know what that was.”

“Okay,” Harry says, uncomprehending, “then what was this?”

He rolls his eyes. “This was me kissing you back, you moron.” He licks his lips. “Can we go back to that, now that you know I’m not confused? I think I actually felt something.” 

“You think so?” Harry asks skeptically, because it’s common knowledge that their sense of touch is returning to them.

“I’m not sure yet,” Draco says, a little shifty, “so we have to test it until I am.”

Harry leans in again. “Why do I have the feeling,” he murmurs against his lips, “you’re not going to know for sure for a while?” He doesn’t quite close the gap between them, narrow as it is, waits for Draco to squeeze his hip hard enough he feels a hint of something underneath all that pressure. Not quite pleasure but definitely not pain. “I can feel that,” he whispers.

“Yeah?” Draco swallows audibly and his fingers twitch. “What does it feel like?”

“Like a really light touch, just your hand on my hip. Like -- like this.” He grips Draco’s shoulder and pushes his fingers in hard flesh. “Can you—”

Draco makes a low sound. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s barely there, but. That’s—”

Harry doesn’t want to hear him say weird or odd or strange or whatever other adjective he can find for it, so he closes the last few centimetres separating them. It’s only a hint of a kiss, despite the way they push into it, lips sliding together slowly, and Harry hasn’t felt anything like this in months. 

He’s not used to the way his body isn’t responding to the coil of want sitting hot in his stomach but it does nothing to dampen the rush of arousal he experiences when Draco parts his lips on a gasp. It’s easy, then, to deepen the kiss as he slots in between the open V of Draco’s legs, fingers pressing and pulling, and he wants. 

Fuck, Harry wants to open Draco up and push in, fuck him hard and make him beg. Wants to curl his fingers around a cock that isn’t—that isn’t, wants to keep kissing him until their lips are sore, wants to suck him off and make him come on Harry’s fingers. He feels delirious with it, a desperation made worse by the fact that they can’t.

“Fuck, Harry,” Draco breathes when they break apart and he sounds wistful.

Yeah, Harry thinks and he settles his trembling hands on top of Draco’s as he tries to slow them down. He breaks the kiss and stares at the wall, breathing hard even though they don’t need to, automatism. Draco embraces him hard enough it feels like a gentle hold, almost like acceptance.

* * *

Harry needs—he thinks he needs time.

Time to figure out what this is, what they are. He doesn’t think he’s in love with Draco, not by a long shot, there isn’t anything romantic between them. It’s nothing but comfort, he thinks in the dead of the night, a little restless because he wants to be out there gathering ingredients while most players are wasting their time resting.

He crawls out of bed, careful not to disturb Draco, but when he looks up, blue eyes are watching his every move. “I’ll—I just need to—”

“It’s fine,” Draco croaks. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Harry whispers.


	7. Episode 4

Unlocked: 49

Location: Valencia City, Valencia

Server: Valencia 2

**Party**

Bumblebee LV. 61

BirdSong LV. 60

RedNGold LV. 60

Heirlooms LV. 54

There are many things Harry can’t stand, lootboxes being one of them. He has a few in his inventory that he refuses to touch, even though Dumbledore and Fawkes ask him about them whenever he sees them. It’s a little bothersome, but he always brushes their questions off. There’s no need for him to open the boxes. They stack in his premium inventory, taking up less inventory space than if he were to open them. 

Harry opened one box, early on, and got some sort of cloak that he’s stuck with now. It’s description says _test item, disabled_. He has no idea what it was supposed to do, but he figures it’s a leftover item from the beta. He tried binning it but he got an error message about it being a special item, so he’s stuck with it now. 

“I’m quite fond of them,” Dumbledore says, speaking of his own special items.

They’re on their way back to Ancado Harbour from where they’ll take the ferry back to Velia. From there they’ll ride their horses back to Heidel and then finally they can rest. Harry hides a yawn behind a fist, actually tired from a full day of negotiations with some of the higher guilds who just won’t settle. Dumbledore and Harry are walking ahead, Draco and Fawkes a few paces behind them.

The duo makes Harry nervous; what he wouldn’t give to be able to eavesdrop.

“I know it’s just sitting in my premium inventory, but it’s just such a waste of space,” Harry grumbles not for the first time. “I’ll have to look at it every day.” Not quite true—he hasn’t looked at it in _months_. He wonders where the money for the premium store comes from. He himself has a stack of cash, more than what he got from the 6 month anniversary, that he doesn’t like touching just in case. 

The premium store isn’t generally something players like to talk about, so he’s not entirely sure how it works for others. Do they get small amounts each day as well? Is that a game mechanic, considering they’re stuck? Draco has no qualms about spending. Harry stopped after the first month, unsure what his financial situation is outside. He doesn’t like thinking about that too much, because he’ll start thinking about the outside, about freedom, about safety.

It’s just outside Ancado that Dumbledore halts, his humming coming to an abrupt stop. They can clearly see the town ahead, lanterns lighting up the houses and casting a yellow light on the streets. 

There are—

There are _mobs_ walking around town. Goblins, from the looks of it. It makes no sense, the borders of the town still glowing green to indicate its zone. Mobs shouldn’t be able to get in unless they were lured by a player, but goblins are only found in Balenos, the very first region. There’s no way a player managed to get them all the way here without their AI resetting and the goblins going back to their default location. 

Harry grips his glaive firmly, confused but ready to kill. 

Hedwig comes rushing toward them, dressed in her customary white dress, her long hair flowing behind her like a veil. She holds a staff in one hand with a beautiful crystal ball set in crow’s feet on top. “They’re coming from a strange circle in the ground,” she says in a clipped tone. Then she sees Harry, and her face relaxes some. She puts her free hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezes, leaning in to give him a kiss on his cheek. “Hello, darling, it’s been too long.” 

They go down the path together, into the harbour village. “And this is happening everywhere?” Dumbledore asks but from his expression he already seems to know the answer. “Someone must be down in the chamber.” 

“Death Eaters,” Hedwig and Fawkes answer as one.

Harry stifles a panicked giggle; they’re so alike, those two, the same chiselled faces, and twin caring personalities, no wonder she’s been his First Officer since pretty much the start of the game. Harry knows her from before, she used to babysit him when she was a teenager. Seeing her here had hurt but he’s used to it now.

Before long they find themselves fighting for their lives amid some of the other villagers. The goblins look very different than the ones found in Balenos. They’re better equipped, for one, and have a higher defence, whether that’s innate or because of armour they won’t know until they compare damage with and without armour-piercing weapons, but now is not the time for that.

In his peripheral vision, he sees a goblin poised to strike at Draco’s back. He knows it’s not possible but Harry swears he feels his heart skip a beat in fear—he’s not the only one with ridiculously low health, they’re all in pretty bad shape to the point where Harry isn’t sure they’re going to make it. Just when they’ve defeated a wave of goblins, a fresh wave of mobs comes through the hole in the ground in the middle of town.

There’s suddenly a blue light, and for a few seconds Harry fears that someone is going blue, but then the mobs around them all flicker and explode and disappear, as if they were never there at all. A large-lettered message pops up on his screen.

  
  


_Congratulations!_

_Level 50 of the Chamber of Secrets: Unlocked._

  
  


“What the fuck was that?” Draco shouts in the sudden silence.

* * *

There is an emergency council meeting in Calpheon City on the Mediah 9 server, all the representatives of the higher guilds together, that Harry and Draco aren’t allowed to sit in on because they’re not part of any guild at all. It doesn’t matter much, however, because people will update him later anyway. Not on all the nuances and the guild politics, they don’t bother with that anymore after it became apparent that most of that will go over Harry’s head—Draco pays attention to those details now.

Harry doesn’t care as long as it doesn’t influence whatever happens on the mob line when they’re summoned. 

It’s surprising that the Death Eaters chose to go at the basilisk on their own. Usually they coordinate with at least the Order if not Hogwarts as well. The Death Eaters are all red cursors, all 100 guild members. They have a sub guild they simply called DE Recruits which accepts oranges and even yellows, and the name is a bit misleading, as some of the most important Death Eaters are part of the Recruits but can’t move up because they’re not a red.

Harry’s an orange, has been since week 3. They’d known about yellow cursors already, those who initiate PVP with a green cursor, and reds, those who have killed, but there hadn’t been an orange cursor yet that the general populace knew about. Then Harry went and overestimated how strong he was compared to most players, even then, and he’d killed in self defence.

He thinks with the way these things go, he’ll stay orange forever. Orange is better than red, even better than yellow, as he’d never flag up on another player no matter their cursor, but he still gets treated oddly at times, especially when he’s around non-players. He lost track of how many months he has left until his cursor goes back to green. It’s supposed to be six months after the fact.

It’s when he’s getting ready for rest that it happens.

_Error 74: Username_ Bones _will no longer appear in your friends list._

Harry swallows and closes the pop-up. Either Bones just removed him from her friends list, or…

“She was hit with some type of poison,” Draco says after a minute. “Nobody had the antidote on hand.” His right fingers are still making typing motions on the inside of his left arm. Harry keeps his keyboard on his right arm because his right hand is usually holding his glaive and he’s not as much of a typer as Draco is.

…or she went blue and that’s that.

* * *

Unlocked: 50

Location: Olvia, Serendia

Server: Serendia 9

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 60

Heirlooms LV. 54

With the death of Bones, Harry and Draco need someone else to repair their gear for them. This someone else comes in the form of a weaponsmith recommended to them by Fawkes. She’s part of the Gryffindor guild and supposed to be the best weaponsmith in the game but she stays in Olvia for some reason. She works exclusively for the higher guilds, but Fawkes reassures Harry she’ll help him if he tells her Fawkes sent him.

Harry doesn’t really get much of a chance to check her out until a week later. The mob wave during the Chamber of Secret boss battle seems to be a new feature. The patch notes suggest they can expect that to happen next time they try to take on the basilisk again, which grows stronger after every battle. The next time the front lines attack the basilisk, Harry stays on the secondary mob lines in Calpheon and he rapidly goes through his stack of repair stones. At the end of it he has to face the music and find the elusive weaponsmith in Olvia.

The weaponsmith works out of the back of the blacksmith building on the Serendia 9 server. According to Fawkes, most players don’t notice her hidden behind the hefty bulk of the NPC in the front of the shop. It’s still early morning, but Harry was told the weaponsmith spends most of her nights awake and rests during the day. 

Harry climbs over the thigh-high steel fence of the open building. The NPCs haven’t gone to their place of work yet, so it’s empty. There’s a low burning fire in the fireplace. Standard offencive gear lines the walls, ranging from swords to hammers to pole weapons. Draco eyes a pair of spiked gauntlets and Harry leaves him to it, darting through the shop until he stands in front of a closed door. He contemplates just opening it, but he decides to be polite and knocks.

The door opens just a crack. “Yes?” a feminine voice asks. 

“Fawkes sent me. Before you ask, I don’t have a—a _codeword_ or anything, he didn’t say.”

The player snorts and the door opens a little wider, not far enough to let Harry in but enough that he can see bursts of red hair spill out from under a drawn up hood. “Tell him to send me a message,” the woman says, and she sounds a little familiar but Harry can’t place her voice.

Harry looks at the ceiling before looking back at the sleek red hair. “It’s four in the morning, he’s busy.”

“Busy doing what?” the voice asks suspiciously.

Harry doesn’t sigh, but it’s a near thing. “Grinding Nagas and hoping for a drop.” He bites his lip at the thought, because—“With his shit luck he’ll get fuck all,” he adds under his breath. Fawkes might have most things in life just gifted to him on a golden platter, but a drop account is not one of those. He does have amazing luck with his enchantments, however, which is the exact opposite of Harry, who gets amazing drops left and right but has blown up his gear enough times to know better.

The door opens entirely, the player stepping back. “Yeah, alright. Come in.” 

Harry gets a sword pointed at his throat when he steps over the threshold, however. 

“Lower your hood,” the voice instructs, “I don’t do business with those I can’t see.”

“You don’t have IGNs on?”

“Someone hasn’t read the patch notes,” the woman snaps. “They removed that feature this update, smartass. Hood, now. Both of you,” she says, gesturing with her sword to Draco. The room is cramped with three people and a whole lot of work tables. She turns them around until she’s near the door, kicking it shut with her foot. “Hurry up, I have other things to do.”

“Relax,” Harry says uneasily, wondering what he got himself into now. He’s going to punch Fawkes when he sees him next, he’s sure of it. Harry moves backwards a little, away from the sharp end of her sword, and slowly raises his hands to his hood.

The sword falls to the floor with a loud clang. “ _Harry_?” 

And suddenly he finds himself with an arm full of petite woman. 

She throws her arms around his neck, dragging him down to her level, and Harry realises who she is at the same time she heaves a dry sob. “You’re alive, you’re here, you’re alive, oh thank god.”

“Gin,” he whispers, and his knees feel weak with the force of his grief, because all this time he’d held hope that she hadn’t got in after all, that she’d been locked out. He lowers her hood with trembling hands, and there she is, his lovely Ginny, her face framed by her beautiful red hair, her blue eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “I didn’t want this for you,” he whispers.

She slaps his chest and he holds her hand tightly. “Shut up,” she says wetly, “ _shut_ up.” She takes a shuddering breath.

Realising she isn’t going to let go anytime soon and feeling like he doesn’t want to let go of her anytime soon either, Harry opens his cloak and covers her with it before relaxing back against the worktable behind him, holding her close.

“So,” Draco says.

* * *

Later, he will explain that Ginny isn’t his _almost_ , apart from his almost-sister, but that can wait, perhaps even wait until things aren’t weird between them. Ginny doesn’t let go of him until after the official introductions are over with. They weren’t truly necessary, as Draco and Ginny knew each other from before, sharing the same crazy music teacher, Trelawney.

“Didn’t you recognise each other?” Harry asks.

“When?” Draco replies, confused.

“When you were in Hogwarts?”

“I was in Slytherin, they have their own smiths.”

Ginny nods as if that answers everything. “I mostly help the Order and Hogwarts.” She swats at a small round ball hovering around her. “Mum, stop that,” she hisses. When she sees Harry looking at the recording ball with curiosity, she adds, “I think nearly all streamers are disconnected now. This one just keeps following me for some reason. I’ve named it Mum.” She slaps it out of her face. 

The entire thing, including her wording, is so odd that Harry blinks for a few seconds and feels like he’s missing something. “So it’s still recording?”

Ginny eyes him then shrugs. “I think it might be. Who knows?”

* * *

Ginny goes by the IGN QuidPro, but everyone who knows her calls her Quo even though that wasn’t what she had in mind when she created her name. “I kept trying to recall what you said your username was going to be, thought maybe I should try it as an IGN? But I couldn’t remember.”

And because Harry is mostly known as Orange rather than RedNGold, she couldn’t really have known.

Suddenly Ginny gets excited. “Ron!” she calls.

Harry looks up so fast he would’ve got whiplash from it had it been possible, and sure enough, Ron’s standing in the doorway, looking lost and confused and sad. “Harry,” he whispers and if Harry thought seeing Ginny again was painful, that was nothing compared to seeing Ron.

Before he knows it they’re holding each other harshly, the hint of an embrace between them. “Harry,” Ron says. “I thought you—we didn’t know, I should’ve known you would’ve gone with RedNGold, I should’ve remembered.”

“We should’ve exchanged usernames,” Harry says, and his eyes feel wet but he doesn’t cry, only because he can’t.

“Hindsight,” Ginny says from where she’s standing behind the counter with Draco.

Ron notices Draco then, and first he looks angry, then he looks defeated. “Hello,” he says shortly. “So I suppose you’ve been hanging out with him?”

Harry looks uncomfortable. “Yes.”

But Ron just sighs and adjusts the heavy sword strapped to his back. “Could’ve been worse.”

Harry cracks a smile. “Could’ve been alone?”

“Could’ve been alone,” Ron agrees.

* * *

Ron and Ginny are both part of the Gryffindor guild, Ginny is even an officer but she mostly stays out of the way. This confuses Harry because he can’t imagine why, from the way she’s talking she’s heavily involved and it doesn’t really make sense.

They follow Ginny and Ron upstairs. Their apartment is small and even emptier than Harry’s, with just two beds and a cooking station. A mini-polar bear is stalking around, and two birds fly around. An ugly kuku bird that Harry recognises all too well waggles after the bear. They must be Ron’s, because Ginny doesn’t have a need for them considering she spends most of her time indoors.

Ginny sets about making them breakfast. It’s a little early for it, but their sense of hunger is still messed up. It doesn’t matter when they eat, as long as they eat at least once a day. Most players stick to their regular three meals, including Harry.

“I met Hermione here,” Draco tells Ron while Harry watches Ginny mess about with the cooking station. “We—we got split up.”

“Tough luck, mate,” Ron says with a grimace. “Sucks she was here, she deserved better.”

“Indeed.” 

* * *

Ginny tells Harry and Draco a bit more about Gryffindor, that they’re focused on the smithing crafts but that they do have some combatants like Ron, who chose to stay in Gryffindor to be with Ginny despite having a spot ready in the Order should he want it. Harry feels a bit bad that he had made a deal with Fawkes to supply Hogwarts exclusively back when he was on his own again, as he wouldn’t have minded supplying Ginny or even Ron with whatever they needed.

“That’s really not necessary,” Ginny says with a small smile. “We have plenty ourselves.”

“She’s sponsored by Slytherin and Gryffindor,” Ron agrees. “We have plenty because they keep trying to out-do each other.”

Harry grins, knows enough about the dynamics to know that’s very true. He cocks his head, however, thinking of something else. “Why would they sponsor you if you don’t help them out?” 

“I do help them out,” Ginny says, surprised. “Where did you get that I don’t?”

Harry frowns. “I must have misunderstood,” he mumbles. “Thought you said you only helped Hogwarts and the Order.”

Ginny laughs then, as if that explains everything. “Yes, but Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw _are_ part of Hogwarts.” She takes the meals out of her inventory, setting them on the floor between them. 

They’re several different dishes and Harry recognises them all. His eyebrows rise at seeing the particular dishes. “You could’ve just made a Balenos Meal, you know,” he says.

Ginny gives him an unimpressed look. “You assume my cooking level is higher than it is,” she says, slightly crossly. “There’s a reason I’m the best blacksmith in the game, and it’s not because I waste my time on other lifeskills.”

Harry doesn’t roll his eyes but it’s a near thing; there’s a reason he was one of the wealthiest players in the game, and it was exactly because he chose to waste time on lifeskills… and then he bought a house.

Ginny snorts and mumbles something to herself. When she catches Harry looking, she shrugs. “Just a thought,” she says, but her face hasn’t changed from her unimpressed expression from earlier. If anything, it got worse.

“She gets those a lot,” Ron says knowingly, sticking a fork in his cheese gratin. “Usually it’s Godric sending her weird messages, or her errand boy.”

Ginny just chews her fish, eyes trained on the ceiling.

“She’s thinking she doesn’t have an errand boy,” Ron grins.

Ginny raises a hand in front of her mouth. “Fuck off,” she says, and it’s clear she hasn’t finished chewing yet. She’s having smoked fish steak. Harry’s had it a few times but it’s not his favourite now that taste is returning to them.

Instead, Harry and Draco go with stir-fried vegetables. It looks unappetising, a grey-green mush, but it’s not bad at all. The texture is a bit strange, though, which is what kept Harry from enjoying it before being able to taste it.

* * *

It is good to have Ron and Ginny back. Harry still isn’t sure he understands their situation. They’re part of the Gryffindor guild, he knows that much, and Ginny’s important, something like a Second Officer or other. He understands why Ron would stay with her, but something about it all doesn’t make sense to Harry.

The errand boy Ron mentioned is a boy named Erroll who delivers broken weapons to her from the guilds and takes them back to their owners afterwards. According to Ron he actually enjoys doing it, but it’s strange to Harry that Ginny’s so far removed from society, and why is Ginny, Second Officer of Gryffindor, in Olvia in the first place?

Why did Fawkes send him? Was that just because they’re close friends? It would be something he’d do, he’s surprisingly open about his guilds, at least when they’re alone, which isn’t a lot anymore since Draco returned to his side. Things are still a little weird between them but not as much as it was directly after their admittedly ill-chosen kiss.

With the Weasley siblings back in his life as well, things are starting to look up for Harry despite being stuck in H:CoS. Draco gets on with them well enough, the past not forgot per se, just swept under the rug, much like how Harry and Draco dealt with it.

That first night Harry stays in Olvia with them, curled up on the floor. They spend all day catching up, and then they spend all night reminiscing. He doesn’t tend to do that, tries to stick to the here and now. Thinking of his parents and Sirius just puts him in a bad mood that’ll last for days, because he misses them more than he’s able to describe. 

Whoever said time heals wounds is a liar, because it hurts just as much if not more than it did in the beginning.

It’s not long after their reunion that Harry finds Ginny leafing through a leatherbound book with an angry expression on her face. She’s going through it so slow, the letters must be incredibly tiny. Sometimes she stares off into the distance and her face will slacken some, but then she’ll get angry again.

It’s a curious sight.

“What’s that book about that it pisses you off?” he asks.

She gasps, a hand on her chest and the book on the floor. “Jesus, Harry!” she yells once she gets breath back that they don’t even need. She picks the book back up and closes it, putting it back on her desk with shaking hands. “Just something I found.” She pauses, then nods to herself and changes her mind, “Let’s trade. I tell you what it is, and you open a lootbox.”

Harry furrows his brows. What kind of trade is that? “What?”

“Exactly what I said. You said you don’t like opening them for whatever reason, so I’m asking you to in return for telling you what’s in the book.”

“It’s just garbage,” Harry says.

“How do you know the book isn’t garbage as well?” Ginny’s expression is knowing. “You can’t know that, but you’re willing to gamble on that?”

“I didn’t say I’d do it,” Harry argues.

“But you want to.”

He’d honestly forgot how tiring arguing with Ginny could be at times. “Fine,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “But if I end up with more junk in my inventory that I can’t throw away, I’m blaming you.”

The redhead has a strange look on her face, one that Harry can’t decipher. “What’ve you got from them so far, then?”

“Just something that doesn’t even work, it’s disabled.”

“I thought so.” Ginny is oddly excited. “I think you’ll want to keep that,” she says, hushed. “I think it might not be as useless as you think, no matter what it is. _What_ is it?”

“A cloak.”

She goes still as a statue, her eyes glassy. For a moment there, Harry holds his breath and feels as if time truly stands still. Then she makes an aborted move, as if she wants to touch him but thinks better of it at the last second. “And you still have it?” she breathes.

“Yeah, I tried to bin it but it said it’s a special item.” 

“Oh. That’s convenient. _Inconvenient_ , I mean, sorry.” She gulps. “Anyway, do you want to know about the book or not? I don’t mind getting blamed for more disabled items,” she says with a frail smile.

Harry sighs. There’s clearly something going on with her, but he doesn’t even know where to start asking. Asking if she’s alright isn’t going to work, he tried that already and she’d laughed at him off, dismissing his concerns by saying it was just work distracting her. “I’m busy, you know,” she’d said. Harry is willing to believe that, but there’s more to it, he just doesn’t know which questions to ask.

He flicks his wrist just so to open his inventory. “Just one,” he tells her.

“Mhmm, yes, just one,” she agrees eagerly.

Harry doesn’t wait for the animation to end, swiping two fingers aggressively down his forearm to stop it. He frowns. It’s a broomstick, a Firebolt to be exact. It doesn’t even say disabled on it, but he knows without a doubt it wont’ work—its icon is greyed out. “It’s a Firebolt,” he says, displeased. “It says, _a great broomstick for sweeping_.” He turns to face his almost-sister. “See? I told you so.”

Because despite himself, he’d hoped for something good, which is exactly why he refuses to open the goddamn things. They just give you false hope even knowing the odds, just for a hot second, and then they crash your dreams by giving you nothing but garbage.

And Ginny—Ginny looks as disappointed as he feels, if not worse.

* * *

Unlocked: 53

Location: Port Epheria, Calpheon

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

Birdsong LV. 61

RedNGold LV. 60

Brainy Bird LV. 59

Seeing his favourite birds always makes Harry’s day better, no matter the circumstances. Hedwig’s hug is warm as always and she gives him a playful kiss on the cheek. Never on the mouth, because if there’s one player in the lands of H:CoS who will never owe him anything, it’s Hedwig. 

That, and if there’s one player he doesn’t want to kiss, it’s _her_.

Fawkes’ hugs, on the other hand, are firm. He’s taller and thicker than Harry, clearly used to work out, and Harry knows from experience that it’s so easy to feel safe with him, it’s stupid. He can’t help but get flustered under the attention, however, even after all these months of friendship.

Draco is spending his day with his new Slytherin friends, while Harry, Hedwig and Fawkes are taking Hedwig’s ship out to sea. It’s the first day off he’s had since the game started. Harry’s never taken one off, always doing something, whether that be grinding mobs or gathering things, yet all they’re going to do today is sail, fish and swim.

He hadn’t wanted at first, until he mentioned it to Draco and the blond basically forced him to go. “I swear to god, Harry,” he’d said with a lot of exasperation, “and you claim that I’m the unhealthy one running myself into the ground.” He’d even used air quotation marks. “I’m actually going to meet Goyle later, so just… go.” It’s not like they’re forced to spend all their time together, it’s just that it’s a thing they do. Going off without Draco is strange, a reminder of his absence.

Hedwig’s ship doesn’t have a name, so they just call it _The Epheria_. There are other players around with ships, but they’re mostly on different servers. As such, where they’re going is undisturbed. Harry doesn’t think many players even know about the oysters or the truffle islands. 

“Can you climb the mast to check for ghost ships?” Hedwig asks Fawkes.

She asks Fawkes instead of Harry because he is all too happy to climb _anything_ , including trying to figure out mountains and boulders that don’t have pathing on them thus he is incapable of climbing. Hedwig loves climbing buildings, so they have that in common too. If they could without dying, they’d drop off of any high area they could find, because it’d be close to flying. Sadly the threat of death is ever present, even with things like that.

* * *

Ginny’s odd behaviour still sits badly in his stomach, even as he lays on the deck of the ship, a piece of cloth covering his eyes against the glare of the sun. Hedwig is fishing at the helm and Fawkes is diving for pearls and other treasures. 

He’s with two of the most important players in the game, and he’s thinking of the third one he knows so well. Does he still, though? Is she not different, just like he is? They’ve grown since first joining H:CoS, they’ve mutated into different players than they would’ve been, had things been different. 

So Harry knows that she’s an important player, but he doesn’t know why. Does it have to do with her blacksmithing skill? She’s sponsored by six front line guilds, she has the highest weaponsmithing and armoursmithing skill in the game. That’s commendable, but surely not enough reason to sequester her away in Olvia? Maybe the recording ball had something to do with it, maybe it’s still recording after all, maybe that’s why they don’t talk about it.

But what use would recording be if it’s just recording someone in hiding?

* * *

“Harry,” Hedwig says quietly.

Harry sighs and removes the cloth from his eyes. He should’ve known. _Here we go._

Fawkes comes over and sits down next to Hedwig. “Harry,” he says as well.

His two birds share a look, and then Hedwig says, “Dumbledore—” 

* * *

“So you want me to talk to his Second Officer?” Harry looks up at the sky for a moment. “Not even his First Officer?” he asks sarcastically.

“Moody’s great for fighting, not so much for persuasion,” Fawkes replies, grinning.

Hedwig smiles. “Please, Harry, I know you love helping us out, and this way you could help directly.”

“I’m already directly helping you,” Harry points out. 

There are many reasons why he doesn’t want to be in a guild. One of them is because he likes his freedom, he likes living. He’s fought at the front lines a few times, it’s not that. Well, it’s part of the reason, but it’s not _only_ that. He has _plenty_ of reasons. It means forced socialisation, it means forced training, forced meetings, it means he’ll no longer be able to do whatever he wants. 

Surely Dumbledore will want to know where he goes, if only so they can take a guess whether he went blue or not if he disappears. He doesn’t know if the Order of the Phoenix has a buddy system like Hogwarts does, but why would he want one? He has Draco, and now he has Ron too.

It’s too restrictive.

Harry—isn’t a fan of change, at least not big changes like this. He likes being able to go where he wants without having to justify himself to someone. A smaller part, or maybe it’s a larger part of him that he’s not been in touch with much, thinks, _I don’t want to die_.

That.

That is the main objection he has. It sits thickly in his throat, and he wants to tell them because it is important, _he doesn’t want to die_ , but his throat tightens around the words and he gasps instead. He doesn’t want to die, and he needs his friends to understand that fear.

“Just think about it, alright?” Hedwig says kindly, as if she understands there is something going on with him right then but he’s unwilling, unable, to voice it. She looks a little sad, and Harry hates that, because it’s too close to pity for his liking.

He’s level 60, he’s a higher level than she is.

If he’s going to really fight at the front lines, fight the basilisk, he needs to grind more. Needs to drop his gathering in favour of hitting level 61. He’s halfway there, he’ll probably need a week of straight up grinding to hit it, but he can do it. That should raise his chances, even if he doesn’t trust whatever squad they’ll put him in. Does he even get a choice in that, does it matter to them whether he’s comfortable with them or not, or does he need to put up with it and deal?

Maybe he can ask for Ron. 

Last week was a near miss.

Do they need him?

“You don’t need me at the front lines,” he says, and why is that what he manages to say out loud? “But you want me to because—because we’re friends, right?”

“You make it sound like we’re trying to—” 

“Fawkes,” Hedwig warns.

“Alright, alright.” He raises his hands in surrender. He blows the tip of a feather out of his face. “You’re just so isolated, Harry.”

“We worry about you,” Hedwig agrees.

“What, it’s not because it’s the right thing to do?” Harry snarks.

Fawkes stretches himself out on the deck with a hum. “But you already know that, don’t you.” He frowns, then grabs the piece of fabric Harry had been using for his eyes. “The sun feels warm today,” he comments idly.

Harry glares at him. He just doesn’t understand why they want him with them, he doesn’t think worry is the full reason. But—he has no special powers, no special equipment, although he did take care to get BiS gear early on. His level isn’t absurdly high either, Dumbledore’s the one with level 62 and +20 gear, arguably maxed out. Could it truly be about worries? That they want someone they trust on the battlefield with them?

It’d be the right thing, wouldn’t it, but like Fawkes said… he already knew that.

He’s known for a while, yet he hadn’t wanted to admit it.

_I’m a non-player._

* * *

“Have you met him?” Hedwig asks Fawkes.

“Plenty of times,” Fawkes says and he sounds like he very much regrets that for some reason, “but even now he still tends to keep his hood up.”

“Comes with being a red, I suppose,” Hedwig agrees pensively.

“Dumbledore’s Second Officer is a red?” Harry asks curiously. He’s heard the name before, but much is known about him at all beyond that he’s an amazing fighter. The fact that he’s red completely escaped Harry. Maybe someone had mentioned it before, but he sure doesn’t remember it.

“Yes,” is all Fawkes is willing to say.

“Have you met him?” Harry asks Hedwig, curious despite himself, still a little grumbly that he agreed to a meeting at all.

“Nope, he’s never around for meetings, but we whisper a lot about our guilds.”

“I met him because I spend so much time with Albus,” Fawkes explains.

Fawkes and Dumbledore are thick as thieves, it’s always been the case. Harry often wonders if they’ve known each other _before_ , but nobody seems willing or able to answer that. _Before_ is a bit of a hot topic, after all. Harry gets the impression that Dumbledore is much like a father to Fawkes.

“He’s just jealous of Night,” Hedwig grins. “Night gets more attention.”

“Oh, shut up.” Fawkes huffs. “He does _not._ ”

* * *

It’s not until late in the evening that they return to Port Epheria. It’s a harbour town on the east coast in Calpheon. It’s surprisingly packed despite being out of the way, Harry and Draco and even Ron have been escorting groups of non-players from Olvia, Velia, Heidel and Glish to other settlements across the regions to lessen the crowds in those first four towns.

There are two other ships, nearly identical to Hedwig’s Epheria apart from the colouring, docked in the wharf that weren’t there when they left early in the morning, so either it’s from two players who server hopped or they weren’t the only ones out at sea today.

There’s a guild that calls itself The Pirates consisting of a group of reds who live at sea. They hop servers every other day, never staying in the same place for very long. Harry doesn’t personally know anyone in it, but he’s seen them around sometimes. They even got their hands on a pirate flag. From what Harry heard they’re “harmless reds who made a mistake” or so the story goes, as opposed to the Death Eaters and their guild leader Lord Voldemort. 

Harry doesn’t think there’s anything like a _harmless_ red walking around the regions; the only harmless murderer is a dead one, after all.

The ride back to Heidel and then even further west to Tarif where Dumbledore’s Second Officer is supposed to meet them is long, although not as long as it would’ve been at the start of the game. Their horses now are a lot faster than they were, bred and trained by non-players usually in Heidel. It halves their travel times, but even then there are no shortcuts through mob-infested lands either when riding to Tarif.

They stop in Heidel for food. It’s rush hour, however, so they decide to stick to Fawkes’ house. When Harry checks, he notices Draco isn’t back yet, and Harry feels a pang of regret at the lack of communication. Harry wants to go back to what they were, but he doesn’t know how to fix it or how to tell Draco he hates their stilted interactions nowadays and that he’s sorry for walking out on him.

After dinner they climb back on their horses, riding the last quarter of an hour distance to Tarif, which is located in Mediah, Serendia’s neighbouring region. Harry doesn’t like it, it’s too sandy, there are too many rocks and it’s altogether too dry for his tastes. He prefers the lush sceneries of Calpheon and the endless grassy hills of Balenos.

They don’t race this time, riding at leisure. Fawkes is singing and Hedwig is egging him on in between whistling loudly and laughing when he flips her off. Harry recognises the song but can’t place it, unsure if it’s something Fawkes has sung in his presence before or whether it was something he’d known _before_.

“You know, there _has_ to be something seriously wrong with you,” Hedwig tells Fawkes, keeping Harry in between them. 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re just—too perfect,” she says. “Do you snore?”

“No,” Harry answers for him, then flushes at Hedwig’s raised eyebrow. 

“Did I ask _you_ , sir?” she says pointedly. “So not snoring, what else could be wrong with him, do you think? Maybe he’s super clingy.”

“ _He_ is _not_ clingy!” Fawkes shouts.

“I bet he’s just really boring, isn’t he an accountant or something?” Harry offers.

“Excuse you.”

Hedwig _oh_ ’s at that. “You might be right! When we met, he was just like you, always g—”

Fawkes throws his head back and laughs loud enough to drown her next words out.

* * *

Nightmare is waiting for them near the warehouse manager, Hedwig tells them. Is Tarif where he lives? Harry doesn’t know anyone who lives here, not on any server. It’s as good as deserted. Tarif is a small village, only consisting of two crossing roads along the river. There’s a cotton farm close by and some great grinding spots, but they’re not worth staying in Tarif for. Heidel is only fifteen minutes away if you have a fast horse and don’t dawdle, unlike what the three of them did on the way here.

Sure enough, there’s a hooded man waiting on the platform, a red cursor turning on its axis above his head, the familiar Order emblem sitting next to it in the air. Harry keeps his glaive out of his inventory, leaning on it while Fawkes greets the man, Hedwig and Harry giving them some space. Order member or not, he doesn’t know what to do with a red cursor in a friendly setting. 

A red cursor brings a lot of attention, especially the negative kind. Harry couldn’t imagine having to deal with that, which may be just the reason he wanted to meet here. The man gestures for him to come closer. Harry approaches him cautiously.

The man lowers his hood.

“ _Harry_ ,” Sirius says, and he sounds absolutely _wrecked_.


	8. Episode 5

Unlocked: 53

Location: Tarif, Mediah

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

Bumblebee LV. 61

Birdsong LV. 61

Nightmare LV. 61

RedNGold LV. 60

Brainy Bird LV. 59

For a moment, Harry doesn’t feel anything at all, his mind drawing a blank. “Oh my god,” comes out of his mouth and a chill runs down his spine. “Oh my god, Sirius.”

Sirius is here, he’s here, he’s _here_.

His nose itches but he doesn’t cry, he can’t, the ability still not there. He wishes, though, because it feels like a harsh pressure on his eyes and his throat. “Sirius,” he whispers once more, and suddenly he has a mouth full of the man’s shirt.

Sirius is here.

Sirius is a red.

_Sirius murdered someone._

* * *

“He was in my spot,” Sirius says later, much later, “so I flagged on him.”

* * *

Sirius is humming something while they wait for Dumbledore to arrive and Harry can’t stop looking at him in wonder, an odd pressure in his chest. He leans against Sirius and the man chuckles fondly and tucks him under his arm in response. “I shouldn’t be glad to see you,” he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Harry ducks his head. “I’m glad to see you too,” he says quietly. When he glances up, he finds Fawkes _looking_ at them, and if he could have, he would have blushed awkwardly under the scrutiny. Harry has never felt more seen. Instead, he just smiles at Sirius so he doesn’t have to look Fawkes in the eye. “Ron and Gin are here too,” he tells the man.

Sirius’ arm tightens around Harry as his eyebrows rise. “They’re still alive? I know they made it in, but we got disconnected before I could get their usernames.”

“Gin’s Second Officer of Gryffindor,” Harry tells him.

“No way, she’s Quo?”

“Yeah,” Harry says with a nod.

“Well, _fuck_.”

Harry winds his arms around Sirius’ torso. “I’ve missed you,” he mumbles against a hard chest. It feels no different than _before_ other than that there’s some of the feedback missing. They’ve been here before. It is familiar in a way that he knows makes Sirius uncomfortable.

As if it doesn’t take two.

* * *

Dumbledore takes one look at them and smiles. Harry awkwardly lets go and steps away, Sirius’ arms falling to the sides as Harry folds his own in protectively in front of his chest. Dumbledore’s genial expression makes him want to explain himself, to justify why he was cuddled up in his officer’s arms.

Tarif’s inn is empty of PCs, and it’s late enough that even the NPCs have gone to their homes, the only one left is a bartender. They settle in a booth, and Harry curls up against the wall in the corner, knees pulled up, arms wound around them. His visage doesn’t exactly scream _recruit me_ , but that’s what they’re there for.

Hedwig, sitting across him, gives him an encouraging smile. “So Harry has changed his mind,” she tells the group.

“Wow, rude,” Harry says mildly. “No. No, I agreed to talk to Dumbledore’s Second Officer, that’s all. I never said I’d _join_.”

“But it’s Sirius,” Hedwig says. “Don’t you want to—”

“Low blow,” Fawkes says over a pint of beer that’s far too sweet, Harry knows.

Hedwig sighs with exasperation. “Do you or do you _not_ want Harry?”

Fawkes rolls his eyes. “Voluntarily, yes, not browbeat into it through manipulation.”

“Because you’re above manipulation?” Sirius sneers.

Fawkes glares back just as hotly.

Harry blinks, taken aback by the animosity between the two.

“They dislike each other.” Hedwig takes a sip of her own drink, whatever it is. Something green and slimy looking. “They’ve disliked each other since the first day they met.”

“Arrogant son of a bitch,” Sirius mutters under his breath.

Harry elbows him with a frown. True, Harry had thought that of Fawkes as well when they first met, and kept thinking so until their stint in the desert. That had been a real eye opener, but it seems Sirius never had such an experience. He never had reason to believe otherwise, because Fawkes is a master at making people believe what he wants them to.

He can’t think of a reason for why Fawkes would dislike Sirius so much, though. Was it just in response to Sirius? That’d make sense.

“Let’s not do this,” Hedwig butts in. She gulps down what’s left in her cup, then puts it aside and leans with her elbows on the table. “Harry, you’re one of the highest levels we’ve seen. Most of us are mid to late fifties, but you’re sixty.”

“How close are you to sixty-one?” Fawkes asks.

“I probably would’ve hit it tomorrow if not for today,” Harry admits sheepishly, but he’d had fun today. Plus, if he hadn’t gone, who knows how long it’d have been before he ran into Sirius, if ever. “Two days maybe.”

Sirius whistles. “Nice, nice.”

* * *

Harry has to give it to them, they really try to convince him to join either the Order of the Phoenix or Hogwarts. They offer him max pay, which is quite a lot but unnecessary. They offer him the position of Third Officer, which is a big fat no. They offer him maxed guild boosts, which is nice but he’s done fine without so far. Then they offer him freedom, and that’s something he’s interested in. He doesn’t want to be chained down by a guild, obligated to be at certain spots and meetings. Responsibilities and requirements, no thanks.

“Nothing would change,” Fawkes tells him.

Harry wrinkles his nose. “Then what would be the point of joining?”

Dumbledore, Hedwig and Fawkes all share looks between the three of them, and Harry hates it. So there’s something going on, he thinks as he takes in their expressions, Hedwig’s look a little more urgent than the other two. “We need all the support we can get at the front lines,” she says. “In return, you’ll have access to the best crafters in the game.”

That—that _is_ tempting. “But you’re already hurting for member slots,” Harry points out.

“It’s a sacrifice we’ll have to make,” Fawkes says with dramatic airs.

Dumbledore’s lips turn up. “Fawkes,” is all he says.

“You’ve already been supporting Hogwarts,” Sirius cuts in before Fawkes can reply. “I didn’t know it was you, but you have, haven’t you? It’d be no different, except instead of only Hogwarts, you’d include the Order.” He looks at Dumbledore. “Not that I’m not happy to have my godson with me, but why, exactly, do we want him again? If he doesn’t wish to join, then why—”

“He’s our friend,” Hedwig interrupts.

“You have plenty of other friends, yet they’re not in the Order.”

“We worry about him.”

Sirius’ lips thin, likely because he, like Harry, understands that there’s something they’re not telling them.

“There are… the walls have ears, everything has ears, we cannot tell you much. Just know that Harry’s been chosen and there are things at play that can help us.” Hedwig sucks in a breath. “Dumbledore and Fawkes know a lot about the game, Night.”

“I don’t like this,” Sirius states, “but I understand I’m being outvoted here.”

Because the Order of the Phoenix and Hogwarts might have different names and different leaders, but at the end of the day they’re one single guild split into two, with two leaders who know each other incredibly well. It’s Dumbledore who is in charge, an equal only to Lord Voldemort, who leads the Death Eaters and their child guilds.

“I could just create my own guild, and join the network that way,” Harry offers, the thought coming to him before he realises it. “I could call it Dumbledore’s Army,” he says with a grin.

“Don’t be silly,” Sirius says, “that serves no purpose whatsoever. You may as well join us if you’re going to do that.”

Dumbledore has a jovial smile on his face. He’s the oldest Harry’s seen in H:CoS. “It would be an honour, Harry, but unnecessary,” he agrees. 

Of course the old man knows Harry’s name by now, Harry doesn’t know why he’s surprised. There’s a lull in the conversation while everyone thinks of their own arguments in favour, those being the trio, or against, that being Sirius, joining them.

“Hogwarts’ Army then,” Harry says next, a little desperately, trying to lighten the mood because the silence after Dumbledore’s words is unbearable. He hates silence like this.

Fawkes exhales loudly in amusement. “Sure, Orange.” He seems to seriously consider it for a moment, however. “With the way you go about things, you’d have the combat boosts maxed out within a few weeks, maybe a full two months to grab some of the life skill boosts as well. You do well solo, I know that.” He hums to himself, eyes unfocused for a moment. “You could definitely do it, if you truly wanted to.”

Hedwig looks unhappy. “That’s quite the commitment.”

So does Sirius. “Fawkes, you just want a sister guild attached to your name,” he says, sounding annoyed.

Fawkes smiles smugly, because yes, he probably wouldn’t mind. He’s the one who was fast enough to snag the guild name Hogwarts, only seconds before Lord Voldemort, or so the story goes. “I’m just saying, it’s a viable option, though Hedwig’s correct. It’d be a huge commitment. If Orange is serious about the offer, we’ll happily support him,” he ends diplomatically.

That, for some reason, annoys Sirius even further, but Harry shifts in his seat as he thinks about it. “We’d be a sister guild, not a child guild,” he feels the need to point out. Being a sister guild wouldn’t be _too_ bad, now that he thinks about it. He feels a bit odd that he hasn’t thought of something similar before, starting his own guild. He could’ve had all those boosts already if he hadn’t been so stubborn about staying guildless.

“Of course,” Fawkes agrees easily, though it’s Dumbledore who needs to give the okay.

Sirius grimaces.

Dumbledore looks entertained by the proceedings, at least. “If Harry were to create his guild, you may join your godson if you so wish, Nightmare. Don’t feel obligated to stay, there’s no reason to, as we’re still fighting for the same goals. I’m sure Harry wouldn’t keep you from doing things the way you used to.”

“See, your GM approves,” Harry says with a nod, having decided this is the road he wants to take, one he should’ve taken months ago, honestly. “C’mon Sirius—I mean, Night.” He swallows at his faux-pas, but by now they all know each other’s names, don’t they? It shouldn’t matter anymore in this setting.

Sirius sighs, put upon. “Let me think about it,” he says, arms folded in front of his chest as he leans back in the booth. His lips twist downward when he accidentally bumps into Fawkes, and Harry wonders why they even bothered to sit next to each other if this is how much they dislike each other.

“I’m going to make a guild regardless,” Harry announces, then frets a moment about how to go about that. There should be an option in his menu, but where?

Dumbledore chuckles. “The guild menu, Harry,” he says knowingly.

“Ah.” He finds the guild button soon after, and it shows him the guild menu. There’s a button with a crown on the top right with the text Create a Guild underneath it, so he presses that button, types in the name in the popup and pays the fee. The fee makes him wince a little, because that’s a lot of galleons even for him, but whatever. “Done.”

“You just made one?” Sirius asks, resigned.

“Yes. I’m the only one in it,” Harry says, moving as if to wipe away tears. He promptly gets a guild alert.

_Guild Hogwarts (leader: Birdsong) wants to ally with Hogwarts Army (leader: RedNGold)._

_To accept, go to Guild Settings = > Alliances. _

“Sweet, I didn’t know you could check other guilds out,” Harry comments as he accepts. He clicks a few links and then looks through Hogwarts’ screen. 97/100 members, it reads. Another message blinks into existence, this time a request from the Order of the Phoenix. He’s going to need to read what that means later. He knows you get a trade discount between guilds if you’re in an alliance, but it also means you can’t flag on another player in an alliance unless you’re willing to go orange instead of the regular yellow.

“One of the perks of alliances is that you get a discount on hiring players, so to speak,” Fawkes explains later. “They’ll still be part of their guild, but any progress toward quests or achievements will go toward the hiring guild. They can also drop off resources into guild storage.”

“Or steal them,” Harry concludes.

“No,” Fawkes says with a chuckle and Harry fights a blush. How is a man dressed in bird feathers so handsome? “The GM has to approve every transaction.”

“Ah, so that’s the trade system people talk about. I thought it was a straight up trade between guilds.”

“No, that’d be too easy.” They share a smile.

* * *

“Where do you live?” Harry asks when they stand outside the inn once more. Dumbledore already went home, but the four of them are standing near the statue in the middle of Tarif. It’s so early the sky already shows streaks of red and orange.

“Here,” Sirius answers, spreading his arms to indicate Tarif. “Anywhere, really,” he confesses next. “Wherever is convenient. It’s hard to go into town as a red, people don’t like you on principle.”

Harry grimaces. He can imagine, has personally had to chase out reds who bothered non-players in Heidel. Not that the reds ever did anything, but they bothered the non-players just by _existing_ , and that was enough for them to ask for help. Harry has met some reds who weren’t bad at all, and of course there’s Sirius. Harry gets how easy it is to overestimate someone when there’s absolutely no indication of their level or their gear. He himself is an orange player, he should know.

A system message appears in his inbox just then, the monthly lootbox. Immediately Fawkes and Hedwig are upon him. “Open it,” they urge at the same time.

“Jesus,” Harry mutters. “Later, alright?”

It doesn’t look to be alright with them, but Harry hates those boxes so much, he can’t properly explain to them how much. He thinks that even if he tries, they won’t understand. Or perhaps they’re not even trying to understand, is the thing, much like Ginny, who so far has always asked about them when they see each other.

“Let’s go home,” Harry sighs, ignoring their disappointed looks. “The streets will be empty, do you want to join? You rest during the day, right?” Most reds led vampiric lives here, because during the night they could freely move around without outcry.

“Yes,” is all Sirius says. “Where do you live?”

“Heidel, that big place near the marketplace.”

“Shit, you’re the one who bought that house?” 

Harry grins. “Yes, of course.” He’s still damn proud of it too, it was one of the most coveted houses around the town. “Did it as soon as I could.” Not entirely true, he’d waited some time before he finally decided, but he’d been content in the knowledge that he’d been the only one able to afford it. 

Hedwig lives in Altinova, which is further east, while Fawkes has moved to Heidel and so they split up at the edge of town. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” Hedwig asks Fawkes, who nods, and then Hedwig galops off.

The three go back to Heidel at a slow pace, though it’s a bit tense between the two men. Harry hates it, because not knowing that Sirius was here, he had thought often of what his parents and Sirius and Remus would think of his friends here. Would they approve?

But now it looks like Sirius _doesn’t_ approve, and Harry hates it.

“We can go to Olvia, get your gear looked at,” Fawkes says when they approach the town border. “It’s still early, Ginny should still be up.”

“Does she fix your gear as well?” Harry asks Sirius.

“I think so, I just give my equipment to Dumbledore when it needs repairing.”

“Ginny has an errand boy so she doesn’t need to travel. You’ve met him before, surely, his name is Erroll. We pass broken equipment to him and he brings it to her.”

Harry squints. He has not met a boy with that name, but then he realises the words were meant for Sirius. “I need some durability repaired,” Harry says. 

“Alright, Olvia it is.”

They change course, upping their travelling speed some after they pass Heidel Pass and its curly road. In the distance they see Velia, but they go west long before they ever hit the town. They stick to the dirt road mostly because the imps they would pass are annoying. Imps are far too weak to harm them by now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not irritating to worm your way through them.

As they continue north-west, the landscape changes from soft green fields to more and more hills until finally they’re at Olvia. They dismount their horses, leaving them at the stable, then make their way through the narrow passages until they stand in front of the blacksmith building. There aren’t any lights to indicate there’s someone there, but that doesn’t mean Ginny isn’t working.

They climb over the wrought iron fence that reaches about thigh-high. Much like Draco the first time they got here, Sirius curiously inspects the inside of the blacksmith shop, the many weapons and pieces of armour hanging from hooks on the walls.

Harry ignores it, moving to the door in the back instead. He thinks of doing some sort of complicated pattern for fun, but decides it’s too much effort, so he just knocks twice.

“Who is there?” 

“Harry, Fawkes and Sirius.”

“Sirius?” Ginny squeaks as she opens the door, and for a second she sounds and looks so much like before that it hurts. She’s so hard nowadays, almost cold in her demeanour, and Harry hates that too.

There are many things he hates about H:CoS, some more than others, but Ginny changing and growing up from an easily excited girl into this stern, serious woman is something he finds hard to consolidate with himself, finds it hard to adjust the way he sees her and the way he treats her.

Sirius doesn’t really know the Weasleys other than Ron and Ginny, who have always been a fixture in his childhood, coming over all the time even when it wasn’t convenient, even when his parents were in a snit, they were _always_ there. He doesn’t know how much Ginny changed, but she did.

She changed so much.

Then, so did Sirius, so did Harry.

So did they all.

* * *

His entire schedule is messed up now, so it’s a good thing they don’t need to rest as often as they would’ve needed to sleep, even if exhaustion has become more and more of a problem. They all tire now, some faster than others, which hadn’t been the case at all when they first arrived. Harry lays on his mat, listening to Ginny slap whatever equipment into shape in the background, Sirius curled up next to him, his red cursor still an eyesore until Harry gets used to seeing it. And isn’t that a novel, being able to get used to Sirius’ cursor?

Fawkes is working in another room, whatever that means. Apparently there’s a lot of messages being sent back and forth. Harry hadn’t known how much work was involved with leading five guilds until the first time he stayed at Fawkes’, back when Draco left.

The background clanging of metal on metal stops, and then Ginny sits down next to him. He rolls over to look at her in the dark, her blue eyes hard, her hair a halo of red due to a stubborn streak of sunlight coming through one of the windows. 

“Harry,” she whispers, and she sounds as ghostly as she looks in that moment. She mulls over her words. “The Chosen One,” she says bitterly, and she chuckles breathlessly. Her cheeks hollow for a few seconds as she sucks on the inside of her cheeks. “You must—” She falls silent, her eyes moving as if reading something. “Nevermind,” she says.

Harry sighs. “You want me to open up another fucking box, don’t you?”

She looks guilty.

Harry wants to be angry but he can’t. He’s not dumb enough not to get by now that there’s something with those stupid boxes. Clearly he’s meant to get something useful out of them, but that has yet to be the case. He idly watches the animation, the reel of a box opening, and then he snorts. “See, I told you so,” he says, taking the item out of his inventory.

It’s a gnarly looking wand that doesn’t do anything at all.

But Ginny—

Oh.

Ginny stiffens and stares for a very long time, her eyes glassy. “Can I hold it?” she asks quietly. Harry shrugs and hands it over. She looks at where Harry knows the description box is for a long time as well before she hands it back. “I think that might come in handy,” she says with a shaky grin.

Harry wants to ask, he really does because this is ridiculous, all this mystery. If there’s something going on, he needs to know. He can help, he’s sure of it, and he longs to tell her, yet something in her expression warns him off, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

* * *

Harry hasn’t seen Draco in what feels like forever, even though it’s only been two days. What he doesn’t expect to see when he enters Draco’s living room is Granger, of all people. She’s orange, just like him, and instantly he wonders how long until her cursor will go back to vivid green.

“Oh hey, Hermione,” Sirius greets jovially.

Harry turns his stare to his godfather. “You know each other?” He sits down on the sofa, because of course Draco, the shameless whale that he is, has to be fancy and actually furnish his house. It looks like a real house.

“Oh yes, we’ve been staying together for months.” Granger stands to give him a hand.

Harry feels the urge to laugh bubbling up in his chest, because this is just another bizarre thing on top of two days full of bizarre things and when will it stop? Is this just the beginning of the end? What is happening to him?

* * *

Ron and Ginny, after a heavy conversation and with Dumbledore’s blessing, decide to join Hogwarts’ Army. Harry’s not sure what ended up convincing them, he’d like to think it was his company. Draco and Hermione follow, and suddenly Harry has four officers, because the last thing he wants is a difference in rank between them.

First Officer and Second Officer is a player-made concept, they’re both the same rank, so Harry doesn’t do any of those. He just has his guildmates with officer privileges, and that’s it.

Now that things are starting to look a lot more serious with the new mob mechanics, the waves of mobs that appear when they’re fighting a basilisk down in the Chamber of Secrets, more and more players and non-players alike are moving into the bigger towns and cities, moving out of the hole-in-the-wall settlements like Trent in Calpheon and Tarif in Mediah. 

Of course the non-players do it because they want protection, while the players do it because it’s better to fight in groups. The mobs despawn after the basilisk is defeated, though nobody knows what happens in empty towns and nobody is willing to risk their hide to find out whether the mobs just walk around or not.

Fawkes moves into Heidel on the other side of the market on Stall Street. It’s not far from where Harry lives, in fact, if Harry stands at the end of his street, he can see Fawkes’ door. He doesn’t buy the place, even though Harry says he should—it’s great not having to deal with people at his door going into their own house. 

Draco lives next to the Ravenclaw inn, but Hermione declines his invitation and chooses to stay with Ginny in Olvia instead. He’s visibly hurt by this, but Hermione, without saying much, has come to understand what Harry already does: Ginny is being protected. For some reason this means she wishes to stick close. Harry thinks it’s just going to call for attention if they’re suddenly swarming Olvia, when most players avoid the town.

And then there’s Sirius, who doesn’t seem to know what he wants. On the one hand, he claims, he doesn’t mind staying out of town, but contrary to that, he ends up resting the day away in Harry’s bed while Harry’s out grinding—he hit level sixty-one the other day, finally, which means he can now concentrate more on guild boosts and the quests needed for those.

Sirius, who is a red, who murdered someone because he was dumb enough to flag on someone and overestimated the other player. It makes Harry wince, because he could’ve been there, except he wasn’t the one to flag.


	9. Episode 6

Unlocked: 54

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Valencia 3

**Party**

Nightmare LV. 61

RedNGold LV. 61

It is interesting what players come up with in their spare time. Harry looks around him, eyes on the ground because he’s trying really hard not to trip. Where normally are cobblestones there is now a thick layer of ice, courtesy of the Ravenclaws, who were the first ones to realise it was growing colder and they could actually feel it.

The Demi River is frozen over now, and there are many players skating back and forth. In front of the Ravenclaw inn, Lovegood is handing out makeshift skates, created by one of the Hufflepuffs. 

Valencia 3 has become one of the invite-only servers, where uninvited players and non-players just get bullied out of the major towns. There’s no true enforcement, because they can’t actually check everyone, but the concept is widespread and many don’t even bother anymore. 

Elitism is growing wild, and Harry isn’t unaffected either.

Sirius takes his hand and pulls him through the crowd, carefully though, because the ground is slippery. He laughs when Harry stumbles, and he pulls him closer. “Careful there.”

Harry rolls his eyes, as if him slipping isn’t Sirius’ fault in the first place. Trusting him, however, he raises his head and finally looks around properly. There is a makeshift stall in front of the warehouse where some players are selling hot chocolate and tea, and though it won’t feel warm going down, it has started to taste the way it’s supposed to.

They slowly make their way over to Lovegood, then stop and wait in line. The queue is long, Harry is in good company, he doesn’t mind waiting. The only thing he doesn’t truly like is just how many people are milling about. Heidel’s suddenly very small.

“There’s still a lot of people about,” Harry says, a little anxiously for Sirius. He doesn’t want anyone to ambush him just because he’s a red player, and he’s not as well-known on the Ravenclaw server.

“It’s fine,” Sirius replies, giving him a long look. “This ice is worth it.” His hand drops to the small of Harry’s back, and Harry revels in the ability to feel it, a non-painful type of pressure that has become more and more prominent as the weeks go on.

It hits him that he can feel Sirius’ light touch a lot more than he could Draco’s rough touches months ago. “Did they up the sensitivity again?” Harry wonders out loud.

“Not that I know of,” Sirius says, and that reassures Harry, because while he himself has been lax with patch notes, Sirius keeps up to date on those things and has been attending post-update meetings basically since the game started. “There was that update a couple months ago, when they added seasons, if you mean that.”

Harry frowns. “Yeah, that could be it,” he mumbles as he thinks about it. Their experiments must have been before that update then. He finds himself leaning further into his godfather, arms coming up around his waist. He can _feel_ Sirius’ arms around him and he sinks into it, can feel his warmth. “That’s nice,” he murmurs, breath forming small clouds in the cold.

“Hmm?” He sounds distracted.

“Touching,” Harry explains.

Sirius hums again.

Someone whistles for them to get a move on and Harry rolls his eyes. _Nothing nice lasts forever_ , he thinks mournfully, accepting a pair of skates from a beaming Lovegood.

* * *

“Sirius, no! I suck at ice skating,” Harry grins, then giggles stupidly when Sirius spins them around, uncaring of bystanders. He’s a red, crowds part for him and here, on the ice, it’s no different. “Stop, I’m going to fall!” he cries, but he’s laughing so hard his stomach hurts with it. 

* * *

Sirius is good at making him laugh, he thinks ruefully.

He knows the last time he’s felt this carefree was on the boat with Hedwig and Fawkes, but they had been relaxed, there’d been chuckles but they hadn’t been in much of a joking mood. There’d been a comfortable silence, and that had been enough.

Sirius is never quiet, he doesn’t do silent very well. 

He’s always present, so boisterous, always up for a joke, forever young.

“ _I don’t want to grow old_ ,” he’d said, morose, on his last birthday. He’d been drunk, they both had been, sitting in his big empty house after all the guests had left and Harry’s parents had gone to bed in the guestroom.

“ _You make me stupid_ ,” Sirius had said.

Harry had blushed like a damn virgin and said, “ _I don’t mind,_ ” because he hadn’t known what else to say.

Sirius had grinned knowingly. “ _Tomorrow, when I’m not drunk…_ ” He’d shook his head.

“ _Will you remember tomorrow?_ ” Harry had asked quietly.

“ _Of course,_ ” he’d slurred. “ _Will_ you?”

“ _Yes, of course_ ,” Harry had said earnestly.

But in the morning, Sirius hadn’t remembered a single thing.

* * *

Sirius’ eyes are bright. “Harry,” he whispers.

In the distance someone laughs and there’s the sound of broken glass.

Harry turns to look but it’s impossible to see anything that far away in the dark.

“Right,” Sirius says.

Harry looks back up at him, and Sirius’ smile is an awful thing. 

Beautiful, but awful all the same.

* * *

The next morning, Harry comes out of rest exhausted and he doesn’t know why. Fawkes is standing next to his bed, and he must’ve been what woke him up. He regrets giving him free reign. “Harry! Harry, look what Albus and I figured out.” 

“Go on, then,” Harry says around a yawn. He refuses to get up.

Fawkes looks boyish in his enthusiasm, closing his eyes and frowning exaggeratedly. Nothing happens for a few moments, until suddenly with a pop he disappears and in his stead appears a beautiful red bird. Without his wings outstretched, however, he drops down to the ground with an undignified squawk.

Harry makes an aborted noise then laughs so hard he snorts. “Fawkes,” he wheezes.

Fawkes turns back into a man and sits next to him on the bed, leaning back against the headboard. “That didn’t go the way I planned.”

“No?” Harry manages breathlessly. “It didn’t?” The resigned expression he gets in response sets him off again. “It was fantastic.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Fawkes says, letting a still laughing Harry lean against him with only a sigh. “So? What do you think?”

Harry wipes at his cheeks, still out of breath. “Oh, it was something.” It’s his turn to sigh, albeit a bit happier than Fawkes had done just moments before. “Can we all turn into birds or is that just you and your fancy superhero suit?” He looks up, his smile pressed against a muscled thigh.

The man’s hand drops down, carding long fingers through Harry’s hair. “Hmm, Albus wasn’t able to, and he has the suit as well.” His smile turns a bit brittle suddenly.

Harry follows his gaze and finds Sirius in the door opening. 

_This_ again.

He refuses to get involved in whatever is going on between those two.

Fawkes clears his throat. “Right, time to go.”

“No need to leave on my account,” Sirius says tightly.

“No, it’s fine.”

“For _fuck_ ’s sake,” Harry groans and he closes his eyes.

* * *

“You’re such a moron,” Harry will mutter to himself later, exasperated by himself.

* * *

Unlocked: 56

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 61

The announcement sits in his inbox for three days, untouched. 

Harry doesn’t need to open the message to know what it’s going to say, because talk of what it says is _everywhere_. Sirius’ face is drawn as they sit together in the living room.

Harry hates the way updates work. It freezes everyone during one of the night cycles as long as they’re inside green borders. Technically by staying outside of towns you can avoid being updated, but that’s practically impossible, thus everyone is affected by it.

Draco, who stayed the night, comes downstairs. Ginny is sitting in the attic, smashing a well-used hammer on Harry’s stress-bought furniture with a vengeance. Ron and Hermione are out getting all of them dinner. 

There’s a meeting tomorrow, in Valencia, though Harry isn’t sure if Valencia is such a good idea for a meeting like that, where everyone in the high guilds will be attending. It’s necessary to have it, no doubt about that, but with the changes, Harry thinks it’s too far.

The announcement starts off the same the others have in the past.

  
  


_Hello adventurers,_

_We’re glad to see you’re all still enjoying Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets._

_Don’t think we’ve not been listening! We love receiving feedback and behind the scenes we’ve been hard at work to bring you new content. Thus, we’re proud to announce..._

  
  


New dishes.

Because _that_ ’s what they’ve been wanting, clearly. A large part of the announcement is about it, with large pictures of the new food, their starting value and how to make them. Harry’s cooking level is below par, according to Draco anyway, so he’s not very interested in them. But then below that, at the very bottom, is what everyone’s concerned about.

  
  


_Last but not least, dear adventurers, we’ve heard your other wishes too! Some of you may have noticed already that in the last few weeks, we’ve slowly rolled out a new way to experience Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets. We’re all very excited and we hope you are too!_

  
  


Realism. They’ve added _realism_. 

He hates Riddle so much.

Taste has almost entirely returned, and not eating or drinking actually hurts a little at the end of the day. It’s not true hunger, but it’s a slightly painful pressure in the stomach, which is why Ron and Hermione are at the marketplace. Where before it’d been a luxury to take the pressure off, because before it’d been just an annoyance, now it’s a necessity.

“Are they back yet?” Draco asks as he sits himself down on the floor in front of Harry’s legs. Things are still a little weird between them, and Harry doesn’t know how to fix it, but Draco’s been trying for the both of them, successfully so.

Harry widens his legs slightly so Draco can sit between them. “Hmm? Oh, no they only just left,” he says slowly, a little distracted by Draco’s proximity. He misses the easy comradery they had, bless Draco for knowing how to fix them. They have yet to talk about it, however, and Harry’s not sure he wants to at this point. “Will you be going to the meeting?”

“Haven’t been invited,” Draco says shortly.

Harry hums as he thinks. 

* * *

Unlocked: 56

Location: Valencia City, Valencia

Server: Valencia 2

**Party**

Nightmare LV. 61

RedNGold LV. 61

Brainy Bird LV. 60

FreckledTart LV. 60

BushyPen LV. 60

Heirlomes LV. 58

  
  


A large group of players ends up making their way to Valencia City together. Harry’s group of friends takes up the rear. With the new mechanics, they don’t even bother going through the desert even though it’s a potential shortcut, provided you don’t get lost. So instead of keeping straight ahead after Altinova, towards Sand Grain Bazaar, they take a turn to the left, going north and then north-east. 

It’s a long ride even on their high tier horses. 

They ride past Shakatu and then Ancado Harbour, where Harry hasn’t been in ages. Fawkes gives a dramatic wave as they pass the small town, and before long they’re in Valencia City. There’s a long queue in front of the stables, but Harry and Hermione lead their friends further to the south, where another less used stable is located. They’re not the only ones with that idea, but there’s not nearly as many players here as there are in the north of the city.

There are several rocks that Harry lazily mines while he waits for Fawkes and Hedwig to stable their horses. Hedwig moves slowly, and when Harry raises his eyebrows at her, she grins; she must have some trade items on her.

“Just some ambers,” she tells him. “May as well while we wait.”

Harry returns her grin.

Valencia City is in utter chaos right now. There are players _everywhere_ , in every street, even the ones that usually barely get any traffic because there’s nothing of interest there. Dumbledore, Sirius, Fawkes and Hedwig have gone ahead to the circular plaza they’ll be using as a meeting place, most likely to meet up with Lord Voldemort and his officers.

Harry, Ron, Draco, and Hermione slowly follow the crowd to the centre of the city. A red and an orange player stand near the entrance they’re approaching, clearly keeping order and waving people in and pointing them towards places to sit or stand, depending on where. The emblem next to their cursor implies they’re Death Eaters.

The orange Death Eater sneers at Harry. “You, inner circle,” he says, giving Harry a once-over and blowing dark hair out of his face. He points toward the plaza, where someone created several rings by placing logs on the tiles. “You,” he continues, pointing at Ron, Draco and Hermione, “which one of you is an officer?”

“We all are,” Draco says with a worthy sneer of his own.

“They’re _Dumbledore_ ’s favourites,” the red one says with distaste to his companion.

“Fine,” the orange one barks, “go sit in the goddamn inner circle, then.”

“Someone’s not having a good day,” Draco mutters in Harry’s ear.

Harry can barely hear him over the noise of over a hundred, maybe even over two hundred, players trying to fit into one place. Harry ends up on Ron’s lap while Hermione lounges on Draco’s and then they wait. Around them, more and more people shuffle in. It’s packed, yet there are a lot of players who chose not to attend, most likely relying on their guild leaders and their officers to relay information. Harry doesn’t spot Lovegood anywhere, or Davis, or Boot. 

They’re all seated on logs in a half circle, though the outer circle is standing. In the middle of the half circle stand Dumbledore, Fawkes and Lord Voldemort. It’s the first time Harry has seen the leader of the Death Eaters. What’s most surprising is that he’s an orange rather than a red, even though he only takes reds in his main guild. The recruit guilds are where oranges and yellows go, they even have some greens.

Lord Voldemort is a classically handsome man in his late forties, with dark hair and light eyes, a combination Harry is, admittedly, weak for. Even the grimace he sends Dumbledore while Fawkes is talking is a thing to behold. 

Hedwig and Sirius make their way over to them, Sirius taking a seat in Hedwig’s lap with a mischievous grin. “I’ve never seen this many people at once,” he says.

“Same,” Harry agrees.

“It’s madness,” Hermione says.

“I’ve never seen this many reds in one place,” Ron says, his tone one of complaint.

Hedwig shrugs delicately. “We’re inside the town borders, they can’t do anything.”

“They can when we go home,” Ron argues.

“So we hop back to Serendia 4 before we leave,” Hedwig says with another careless shrug, “it’s not that much of a big deal. Besides, Death Eaters should know better than to kill their front line companions. They kill non-players for sport, not us.”

Sirius frowns. “They’re people like the rest of us.”

“Hmm, I’m sure they are,” is all Hedwig has to say to that.

“It’s unfair,” Hermione starts, but Draco pinches her. “ _What_?” she snaps.

“This isn’t the place for such discussions,” Draco says smoothly.

* * *

“If we may have your attention, please,” Dumbledore says, and immediately a hush falls over the plaza. Dumbledore gives them all a beaming smile. “Perfect, thank you very much.”

“Today we have gathered together to discuss the latest update,” Lord Voldemort says, and Harry decides he can’t stand him because even his voice is perfect. There’s only so many flawless players he can take, and he has enough men on his radar, he can’t handle another one, he _can’t_.

“As we all know, some of these changes drastically impact the way we go about fighting the basilisk.” Apparently it’s Fawkes turn. For once, his face is absolutely serious, not a single sign of his usual playfulness to be found in his expression. He still gestures when he speaks, but the motions are sharper.

Harry’s always known Fawkes was a guild leader, but this is the first time Harry has ever seen him as one rather than as his friend. The difference is… jarring, in a way, because Harry’s so used to the carefree Fawkes that this one is a stranger to him.

Harry forcefully shakes himself out of it.

Lord Voldemort continues. “The patch notes lack a proper description, thus it is up to us to find out what, exactly, has changed.” The man turns to a small figure curled up in the far left corner. “Why are the crystals not set up yet? Set them up, if you’d please, we will wait.”

“Crystals?” Harry whispers to Hedwig over the apology from the figure in the corner.

“Recording crystals,” Hedwig answers. “They’re premium consumables, likely provided by one of Voldemort’s whales. They’re used to create transcripts of the meeting that are then sent to all the guild leaders and officers. You might get one too this time around.”

The small figure gets up and sets up several green crystals around the half circle. He touches each one and whispers something to them. They flash bright green before they dim and then they just emit a soft emerald glow. “Crystals activated, starting countdown,” the figure declares, barely audible above the hushed talk around them, and they retreat to their corner again.

“Let’s just continue where we left off,” Fawkes says.

“He says as if they got anywhere yet,” Sirius mutters quietly.

“Don’t be like that,” Hermione snaps.

“ _Thank_ you,” Hedwig says shortly.

* * *

The meeting is… boring.

It’s interesting, but utterly boring. It runs terribly long as well because someone with a tome and a quill goes around writing down the issues players run into, and clearly not everyone is paying attention because many things get mentioned multiple times. They end up doing a tally for each problem, which means having to count raised hands. 

Then there’s other questions they ask to get an average. How long does it take them to recover? If they get headaches, how often do they occur and when? Have they tried alcoholic beverages and do they affect them? Do they get tired more often, and how fast? When do they believe this started? How much sensation has returned, can they feel pain and pleasure?

It takes a long time to go through all the questions. Even though only a quarter of the front lines showed up, that’s still around two hundred players. Every half hour there’s a break while the crystals are replaced, two scrawny boys too young to be there coming to take them away. Already Harry has a few new messages in his inbox with transcripts and no doubt more will be coming soon.

Around dawn is when they finally break up. Lord Voldemort and Fawkes are seated on a log together, bent over one of the tomes they wrote the questions in. Harry wants to approach to ask if they should wait for him, but he feels the answer is going to be _no_. It bothers him for a reason he can’t define.

“You alright there, Harry?” Draco asks. He follows Harry’s gaze, then makes a low _ah_ sound. “He’ll be fine.”

“I’m not worried,” Harry says immediately.

“Alright,” Draco replies, agreeing far too easily to that for Harry’s liking. “Hedwig and Sirius are staying behind as well, but Hermione and Ron went ahead.”

Harry gives him a long look. “You want to talk, don’t you?”

Draco merely smiles.

Harry doesn’t sigh deeply but it’s a near thing.

* * *

They actually don’t talk for most of the way home. Harry searches for the words that need to be said but has trouble finding them. He knows that they kissed, and that in hindsight it’d been a Bad Idea. With their chemistry beforehand, they couldn’t have known, he thinks, that they would end up like this. Perhaps if Draco hadn’t left, things would be different, but too late Harry realised that he’d… moved on.

He moved on.

By the time Draco came back, the hurt had mostly gone, other players filling the void he left behind. He’d properly opened himself to new friends, and that had been rewarding. He got closer to Hedwig and Fawkes in turn, found friends in Bones and Davis and others like them, all whom he’d previously kept at a distance. 

Bones, who went blue not so long ago.

He misses her sometimes.

He hadn’t needed Draco anymore, but he’d wanted him around regardless. Players change between one month and the next due to the nature of H:CoS, Harry’s seen it so many times now. It was stupid to think either of them wouldn’t have changed in each other’s absence, that they could go back to what they’d been those few months together.

“I thought…” Draco cuts himself off, starts over. “I needed to leave.”

“I know,” Harry says, because as much as he’d disliked it, he knew it was true.

“I needed time on my own, to... see... who I am, to see if I—yeah, to see who I am in here.”

Harry furrows his brow, thinking that over. 

“I only knew who I was with you, and I’m not used to that. Not you in particular, I mean, just in general, I’ve never _only_ been someone with someone else.” He sighs. “I’m not explaining this right, am I?”

Harry bites his lip. “Not really, no.”

“I just needed to see who I was on my own, is all. That’s why.”

That much Harry understood. “So did you find out?”

Draco looks rueful. “Not really,” he admits. “But I tried, and that has to be enough, you know? No, you don’t, do you?”

Harry can’t help a chuckle. “Not really, no,” he repeats.

“It’s fine.”

“But I get that you needed time for… _something_ , that part I don’t understand, but it’s… it is what it is. Did it help?”

“A little.” 

“I think it was good for me too,” Harry confesses. “I think I was too stuck on your presence, like, you were all I had and that was enough for me. I didn’t want other people around.”

“Yes, that’s what I meant. Well, in part.”

“Oh, then that makes sense. Do you want to talk ab—”

Draco doesn’t even let him finish. “No,” he says immediately. “ _No_ , I’m fine, if that’s alright. It’s like you said, it is what it is. It was fun, but…” He trails off. “We shouldn’t have done that. Hindsight’s useless.”

Harry smiles. “You’re talking about it.”

“Shite, yeah, let’s stop.”

“I’m not the one talking about it.” 

Draco shushes him.

“How’s Hermione?” Harry asks cheekily.

“She’s fine.” Draco cocks his head with narrowed eyes. “How’s _Sirius_?” he asks pointedly.

“I think he’s fine.”

“Oh-ho-ho!” Draco grins. “No doubt you think so.”

“ _Shut_ up, stop laughing.”

* * *

Unlocked: 59

Location: Desert Naga Temple, Valencia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 61

Heirlomes LV. 58

There are many things that have changed during the update. It took everyone a week to get used to the new pain threshold, a week of celebrating the return of pleasure and alcohol, before they went back to fighting the basilisk. Harry didn’t partake in the festivities, nor did he go on the front lines to help with the mobs or the basilisk itself; Dumbledore, Hedwig, Fawkes and even Ginny told him off.

Wasn’t fighting on the front lines what they wanted him for? They’re so confusing.

The most recent basilisk kill was a level 59 yesterday, which of course is an excuse for the majority of non-players to celebrate. Real players have other things on their minds. 

  
  


**From User: Brainy Bird**

_The Order, the Death Eaters and the Hogwarts guilds have jointly decided that we need to check map accuracy after some reports have come in that some of the spawning sites have changed._

_Attendance is mandatory!_

_Please check in with your second officer (in person, please), they will be able to tell you more about our exploration missions._

~Hedwig, First Officer of Hogwarts

  
  


Harry wants to be contrary but decides not to. Seeing his friends in action as _figures of authority_ put things in perspective, and made him start doubting himself. 

  
  


**From User: Birdsong**

_Hedwig said she sent you the mass message as well. Feel free to check in with me ;)_

~Birdsong

  
  


Harry narrowly avoids the Desert Naga coming his way, killing it with three strikes of his glaive. His arms burn. “Draco!” he calls.

A group of Desert Nagas despawns and then Draco is jogging over. “What?”

“What do I reply?”

“To?”

“Fawkes.”

“What?”

Harry makes an aborted gesture. “He sent me a message and I don’t know how to respond.”

“Fine, _Christ_. Just show me.”

  
  


**To User: Birdsong**

_consider me checked in._

~RedNGold

  
  


“You’re an idiot,” Draco tells him. “Stop overthinking, you’re friends.”

  
  


**From User: Birdsong**

_Not what I was going for but ok..._

~Birdsong

**To User: Birdsong**

_?? you literally told me to check in._

~RedNGold

**From User: Birdsong**

_I MEANT IN PERSON!!!_

_Do we need to talk?_

~Birdsong

  
  


Harry sighs. “Why does everyone want to talk all of a sudden?”

Already walking away, Draco bursts into laughter.

* * *

Unlocked: 59

Location: Velia, Balenos

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 61

Heirlomes LV. 58

Harry doesn’t know how to reply to Fawkes’ new message either, so he just… ignores it and keeps grinding with Desert Nagas with Draco. They get a few nice drops. Draco of course gets the rare necklace drop that goes for a decent amount on the marketplace, because Harry’s account has rubbish luck when it comes to drops. They both get some boss scrolls that save them quite a few galleons from not having to buy them off the market later.

“Bosses tomorrow?” Draco asks as they dismount their horses at the stable in Velia, where the Hogwarts guild house is.

They follow the street toward the shore, past a few vendors until they hit stairs wrapped around two sides of a building. They climb the stairs, and Harry briefly looks out over Velia. It’s one of the higher vantage points, though certainly not the highest, the highest being the church-like building at the centre of town.

“Here to see Birdsong,” Draco says to the boy in front of the entrance, sounding bored.

The child has to be the youngest Harry has seen so far. It makes Harry sick to his stomach, but he can understand why Fawkes gave him something like guard duty. He must be one of the few non-players living in Velia on the Serendia 4 server.

“Yes, sir,” the boy says and even those two words are heavily accented. “Just a moment.” He disappears inside.

“But _why_ ,” Draco mutters.

“Keeping him out of trouble, most likely,” Harry says quietly. “He’s like, what, ten?”

Draco sighs. “Probably.”

The boy returns quickly. “He’ll see you now.”

Draco raises a single eyebrow as they follow the child. “Will he now,” he mumbles.

Harry elbows him in the side, but when they enter the room Fawkes is in, seated behind a desk, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “So kind of you to grant us an audience, your majesty.” He bows at the waist.

“Thank you for taking time out of your busy day, your highness,” Draco adds.

Fawkes looks embarrassed and he slams the book down. He leans with his elbow on the desk and rubs his eyes. “I don’t know how to make him _stop_ ,” he groans.

“Let me guess, you saved him and his kin?” Harry asks, sitting down on the desk and peering at the cover of the book, but there’s nothing on it.

“Him and his brother, actually.” Fawkes leans back in his chair, gives Harry a blatant once-over that would’ve made Harry blush if he could. “So you finally decided to check in? And in person, too? My, how spontaneous of you.”

Harry lightly kicks him in the thigh in retaliation, but Fawkes grabs his ankle. “You literally told me to check in, so I did,” he says once more, but it falls on deaf ears.

“And you brought a… _friend_.”

“I’ll just—” Draco grimaces lightly, “—go _._ ”

“Oh, could you take Colin with you?” 

“Colin?”

“The kid. He’s a little... just… could you tell him to please go play outside?”

“I’ll attempt to get him to give you some peace for the day.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

* * *

Fawkes has a map spread out on the desk, one that Harry sat down on. It’s mostly empty, just the shape of the regions visible. It’s strange to see it in front of him on a desk rather than on the minimap in the top right of his vision. The map is made out of multiple quest scrolls, each with a different section. The book he was holding has one set for each server.

“We’re here,” Fawkes says thoughtfully, pointing at Velia with a coal stick. “The settlements haven’t changed, so there’s that.” He writes _Velia_ in curly letters on the otherwise blank map. “This is the Serendia 4 map,” he explains. He draws two circles in Balenos, then writes _Steel Imps_ in one and _Goblins_ in the other. “These haven’t changed either.”

“So,” Harry says slowly, “what is going on? What did I sign up for?” Harry leans in to remove a stuck feather out of Fawkes’ face.

“Just a sec—second, hmm. No, nevermind, it’s fine.” Fawkes creates another circle on a different part of the map, this time in the north of Mediah, and writes down the word _Helms_. He throws the stick of coal on the desk, the stick breaking in three pieces at the contact. He leans back in his chair once more, looking up at Harry. “Sorry, what was the question?”

“I asked what I signed up for. Hedwig’s message said something about exploration missions.”

“Ah, yes, we’re sending groups of players to each server to check for inconsistencies. So far we’ve found a few, but they’re mostly on servers that are barely used.”

Barely used by players, he means, because nobody cares for non-players except maybe Dumbledore, Hermione and Sirius. Even Draco, who’d been in knots about it, eventually got over it. Harry certainly didn’t care anymore, especially not now that he technically had the higher moral ground because he was now officially helping.

“Who is doing Serendia 4?” Harry asks, still seated on the desk because so far it doesn’t seem like Fawkes needs Calpheon yet.

“I still need a group for the south of Valencia, if you’re up for it.” Fawkes goes through the stack that’s still on the left side of his desk, grabs quite a few and hands them over.

“Crescents, Desert Fogans and Pila Ku,” Harry murmurs, leafing through. “That’s a long ride. What about the ruins?”

“Hystria Ruins?”

“Yeah, I’ve never been there but Hermione and Sirius have gone there a couple of times, they know more about that spot. They should recognise if anything changed. Are we doing the desert as well? Because that’s madness.”

“Hell no,” Fawkes says with a snort. “I’m not risking that.”

“I’m not doing Pila Ku with just Draco. Crescents aren’t very funny either but we can deal, but Pila Ku, no way. I’m not risking that either.”

“I’m not expecting you to do it alone,” Fawkes says immediately, “I know those are dangerous. But Hedwig is doing south Mediah. She should be done soon. She won’t mind. I can’t, or I would’ve.” He waves at the papers.

Harry smiles slightly. “I know.”

* * *

Unlocked: 59

Location: Sand Grain Bazaar, Valencia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

Nightmare LV. 61

RedNGold LV. 61

FreckledTart LV. 60

BushyPen LV. 60

Heirlomes LV. 58

At the end of the day, Harry, Sirius, Ron, Draco and Hermione trek all the way from the south-west of Valencia to the south-east. It takes them several hours in total, and they’re all incredibly tired when they’re finally done.

They did find one spawn site that was slightly changed, which was actually at Pila Ku. There were more elites, stronger mobs that are a lot harder to kill than regular ones but in turn they have a much better drop table. They’re supposed to be rare, but when they checked there were plenty of them walking about. 

Ron is the one who says what everyone else is thinking already, especially after the update. “The game is turning against us.”

Harry knew this, but it’s not until now that it really hits home. More elites, especially so close together, will make grinding harder too. It might be that they’ll have to go back a few areas, go to weaker mobs just to be able to keep grinding at a good pace and that in turn is going to mean less galleons, both from rare drops as from trash.

Hermione scoffs. “It was never in our favour to begin with,” she snaps. She takes her gloves off and carelessly throws them to the side where they flicker and disappear.

Draco leans on his mace. “Maybe not, but Ron is right. It was definitely not this bad when we first came here. Just look at the update.”

“They didn’t mention the mob changes in the update, but I don’t know why any of us thought this game wasn’t rigged from the start,” Harry agrees. 

“So, what, hundred is a lie?” Sirius snarls. “We defeat a level hundred basilisk and we’ll still be still stuck?” He puffs out his cheeks, so damn reminiscent of _before_ that it almost hurts to see, and then he just deflates where he stands. “No, I don’t accept that.” 

“Well,” Draco says brightly, shaking off the sand from his boots, “neither do we.”


	10. Episode 7

Unlocked: 60

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 61

**To User: QuidPro**

_i got a ring from a box._

~RedNGold

**From User: QuidPro**

_That’s usually how they come…_

_What are you talking about?_

~QuidPro

**To User: QuidPro**

_didn’t expect you to be up._

_i opened the monthly lootbox because nobody shuts up about them, ever, and i got a ring._

_it’s just sitting in my inventory now because it’s disabled. i blame you._

~RedNGold

**From User: QuidPro**

_!!!_

~QuidPro

**From User: QuidPro**

_Come show me, I wanna see!_

~QuidPro

  
  


Harry groans, doesn’t want to ride all the way to Olvia. After the initial chaos that was the update, she and Hermione moved back. Harry’s already wasting time as is, trying to rest but it’s not coming to him as easily anymore as it used to. His legs hurt from the running he did today, muscles burning from the exertion. 

  
  


**To User: QuidPro**

_i’m in bed._

~RedNGold

**To User: QuidPro**

_Can you link it then? (Drag it to an empty message)_

~QuidPro

  
  


He does as she asks, sitting up in bed because handling the screens while laying down is a pain. The ring is called the _Ring of Resurrection_ , and underneath it the only thing it says is that it’s disabled, just like the useless wand and the useless cloak. He doesn’t entirely get Ginny’s interest in them. If she’s waiting for some kind of drop, these aren’t it.

With a sigh he ends up getting up entirely, stretching his limbs with a yawn. He’s up now anyway, he may as well go do something. He doubts there is anyone out there on Serendia 4 doing Ogres, and the highest alchemist in H:Cos, one from the Death Eaters, is looking for Ogre Blood, so that seems to be a good way to spend his time. It’s about half an hour ride to Calpheon if he pushes speed, then maybe another quarter hour to reach Mansha Forest. 

Harry pulls on his boots again, patiently redoing the finicky clasps, then grabs the rest of his armor off his desk. He’s come to love having a house now that he’s actively using it, and he should have started using it as soon as he bought it, really. He even has two armor stands with backup gear now, on display on the ground floor, right next to the Christmas tree gift everyone in H:CoS had been given for the holidays.

There are players who have been keeping track of the amount of days it’s been since they got stuck here, but Harry doesn’t want to know how much time has passed. It comes too close for comfort.

It’s still early in the evening, so there’s plenty of people still around. Harry, who lives in the upper part of town, makes his way down to the stables near the inn. That way he doesn’t have to cross the road where inconsiderate players are horse racing, as if there isn’t a perfect road going around Heidel where they can do that.

Serendia 4 is relatively safe, so Harry doesn’t have to worry about running into reds, yellows or oranges, though he’d prefer orange over yellow. Yellow indicated you’d flagged, initiated PVP, on someone, whereas an orange meant you’d made someone go blue, but at least you hadn’t initiated PVP. For all anyone knew, it wasn’t your fault, as is the case for Harry, who is still walking around with an orange cursor after overestimating his opponent.

He passes Lynch Farm, then crosses the bridge over the Balenos River. There are no Bandits in his way, nor do the Harpies from Delphe Knights Castle pose any issue, the only two mob spawns that he rides through. He crosses the bridge south of Dias Farm, then goes around Calpheon City. Before long he enters Mansha Forest, making sure to pick up the daily quests for the mobs there because he may as well gain a bit of experience toward more Contribution Points, the deposit system of H:CoS.

Ogres are few and far in between, but as he’s the only one doing the rotation, it’s not so bad. He kills Manshas in between waiting for new spawns, then gets bored of doing that and grabs an axe out of his inventory and decides to chop the fir, birch, cedar and the many pine trees that are around the area.

It’s only when his inventory is becoming overly full that he stops hunting down Ogres. He picks up a quest for Rhutum mobs, then goes to Rhutum Outstation to kill those and then he really has to clean up his inventory of all the trash drops that aren’t worth turning in.

  
  


**From User: QuidPro**

_Come to Olvia. D &F are here, they wanna see the ring. _

~QuidPro

**To User: QuidPro**

_can’t i link it? i’m at mansha’s doing ogres._

~RedNGold

**From User: QuidPro**

_No._

~QuidPro

  
  


Harry groans.

* * *

The wooden floor creaks when Harry enters Ginny and Hermione’s apartment in Olvia an hour later, where five players are waiting for him. There are two sofas but Fawkes likes to sprawl, so Harry sits himself between the women. Ginny rolls her eyes and moves over to sit in his lap. Ron sits in front of their feet on the floor, leaning back against Hermione’s legs.

“Food?” Ginny offers.

“No, I ate on the way here.”

“Barbarian,” Ginny grins. Her good humour disappears, however, and everyone seems to take their queue from her because the atmosphere has become tense suddenly. She doesn’t even bat the recording ball away from where it’s hovering near their faces, though she does quietly tell it to piss off. “So you had an interesting find today.”

Harry looks up at the ceiling for a long moment, before sighing and taking the ring out of his inventory. It materialises in his hand, and Ginny immediately grabs his hand to pull it closer so she can inspect it.

“It doesn’t look like anything I expected.”

“Yes, you’ve said that,” Harry says, exasperated and a little sick of all the mystery. “What is with the ring? Why are you so interested in it? It’s disabled, Ginny.”

“Disabled, you say?” Dumbledore asks. It’s not quite curiosity in his voice, but it’s close.

Ginny licks her lips. “I think it’s cursed,” she says. “Look at the—” She swallows thickly, then takes a deep breath as if to calm herself. “Look at the description. See? It says cursed.” 

It didn’t say _cursed object_ when Harry first got it, but now there are purple letters underneath the item name. “So it’s as worthless as the rest,” he says, a little bitter about it. At least others he knows who opened the boxes got something useful out of it, either to sell or to use themselves. He was able to bin the broom, but the cloak and the wand he still has.

“May I see it?” Dumbledore asks gently. He holds out his hand, palm up.

Harry looks at Ginny, but she is staring at the floor, fists balled at her side. He drops the ring on Dumbledore’s waiting hand, and Dumbledore moves to put it on his ring finger. Immediately the room is bathed in blinding light. It disappears slowly until it’s nothing more than a soft baby blue glow around Dumbledore’s finger. Harry frowns at it, unsure if he’s seeing it right—his finger looks a little pixelated. 

Harry feels like something significant just happened, but he doesn’t know what that is.

“What was that?” Ron asks, rubbing his eyes and blinking.

“Albus,” Fawkes says breathlessly.

“It’s a very special… object,” Dumbledore says, voice mild. “The curse is gone now.”

“The curse isn’t gone,” Fawkes spits harshly, “it merely transferred itself to _you_.”

“Like a Tr—parasite,” Ron concludes.

Ginny sniffles and finally looks up, but her eyes and cheeks are dry. “I think it’s clean now,” she whispers.

Harry cocks his head in question. “Ginny—”

“Shut up, Harry,” Fawkes says firmly, and there is a warning in his voice that Harry is quick to heed, “don’t.” He rubs his forehead. “Sorry, just. Put it on and don’t take it off again.”

“You-Know-Who has ears, Harry,” Ginny explains softly. “I think there are some things that get certain bells ringing.”

 _Oh_. Like trigger words. “So when you say you—”

“Don’t say it,” Ginny says, cutting him off.

“I need—I need some space,” Fawkes says, already stalking off towards the door. He slams it closed behind him. 

Harry has never seen him this angry, and he doesn’t understand what happened, because they’re all being so vague, he can’t _stand_ it.

* * *

“Harry?” Ginny whispers when it’s just the two of them left.

“Hmm?”

“Do you still have the cloak? You do, don’t you?”

Wordlessly, Harry removes it from his inventory, shows it to her. She holds it in silence, her eyes rapidly moving over the description, or they would’ve except the description isn’t that long—she’s reading something else.

Harry narrows his eyes. “Do you need it?” he asks.

“No,” she says immediately, her eyes wide as they focus on him. “Never, I’ll never need it. Don’t ever—” She clears her throat. Another deep, calming breath, and Harry hates that she always seems on the verge of a panic attack nowadays. “ _No_. Take it to Fawkes, when he’s cooled off, that is.”

* * *

Back in Heidel, he waits a day before he approaches the man. Harry is full of questions, but afraid to ask after fully realising Riddle has ears everywhere, that they were serious about that. He’d always suspected on some vague level, but having the three people who seem to know the most about the game confirm it puts it on another level for him.

Yesterday scared him, whatever that was with the ring.

Harry follows his street to Stall Street. It’s mostly empty, aside from two riders training their horses in the middle of the night at full speed. Harry carefully sticks to the side of the street.

Across from the marketplace at Stall Street, there’s light burning on the first floor of Fawkes’ house. It comes from a candle on the windowsill, and Harry tries to remember whether that one’s tied to a buff or whether it’s just decoration.

Fawkes looks tired when he opens the door. He sighs at seeing Harry, but steps aside all the same. “Come in, then,” he murmurs. He kicks the door shut behind them, then leans against it with his arms folded defensively in front of his chest, waiting.

Harry carefully pushes some ornaments aside then sits down on the table, the only real furniture in the room. “I’m sorry ab—”

“Don’t, please,” Fawkes says tiredly and he runs a hand down his face. “He did what he had to. Someone had to, and he did it.”

Harry swallows.

“He’s dying,” Fawkes says.

“Oh.” Harry’s throat closes up. “That’s… horrible.” He doesn’t know what else to say. Dumbledore’s been such a fixture here that he has a hard time picturing life without him. He swallows again, around words that Fawkes doesn’t want to hear, not now, maybe never.

“What are you doing here?”

“Ginny sent me.”

“I’m fine.”

Harry honestly doubts that but doesn’t mention it. “She said I should tell you about the cloak I got from a box a while back,” he says, wringing his hands in his lap. “It’s disabled too, all the items are, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

Fawkes wears an interested expression. “Oh? A cloak?”

“Yes. It’s supposedly an invisibility cloak, but it doesn’t do anything.”

“You found all the Deathly Hallows,” Fawkes says, and slowly a grin lights his entire face up. “All three, right? You have the wand, the cloak and the ring?”

“Yes,” Harry says warily. “Fawkes, _please_ , what the hell is going on?”

“It’s about time you asked. Do you have the items on you, or do you have them in storage?”

“I can’t put them in storage, they’re stuck taking up inventory slots but they’re in the premium ones, so it’s not too bad.” Fawkes doesn’t need to ask for Harry to guess he wants to see the items for whatever reason. “They’re disabled, Fawkes.”

“I know that, Orange.”

And so they’re back to his nickname, alright. It’s a little disappointing if anything but Harry is more used to Orange anyway, so he gets over it fast. “Then _what_ is going on? Will someone please start telling me things? It’s driving me nuts.”

“It’s not like you were prepared to listen,” Fawkes says calmly. “It’s only recently that you’ve started coming to terms with things. I’d know, I’ve been a spectator for months.”

That is—surprisingly true. He’s been resistant to most attempts. Perhaps the fact that he said yes to meeting Nightmare, Sirius, had been the first sign that he started accepting what was going on around them. He’s still not entirely there yet, he can feel it in his bones that he’s not come to terms with all of it yet.

Fawkes pushes away from the door, grabs Harry’s wrist and pulls him up the stairs to the bedroom in the back, where there are no windows. He pulls him down onto the bed and they get comfortable against the headboard. “Throw it over us both,” Fawkes instructs them after settling in close.

Harry throws it out like a tent. It stretches automatically to cover both of them. The sequins prick his skin but it’s easily ignored when Harry focuses on how close the other man is.

“Is it active?” Fawkes asks.

“It’s dis—” But Harry cuts himself off, because the item no longer says _disabled_. It doesn’t say anything at all for its description, but the word disabled is gone. He holds up a hand as he activates it. “It is now,” he says, puzzled. “There’s a cooldown and a timer.”

“Ten minutes?” 

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Fawkes says and he takes a deep breath, “because the Deathly Hallows are admin items.”

“ _What_?” Harry breathes in shock.

“Yeah,” Fawkes says with a small smile.

“How?”

“Albus’ brother owns Hog’s Head. That’s how we knew the items existed. They were test items for GMs, and the GMs on EU and NA work for the publishing company, not the developers. They just changed the functionality.”

“So you’re—” Harry doesn’t even know where to start with this.

“I’m?”

“A GM,” he whispers. “Holy shit, the front line guilds are GM guilds, aren’t they? They were created before the game launched?”

“My guilds are GM guilds, yes. The Order isn’t.”

“Wait, they’re all yours?”

Fawkes looks a little proud of himself. “Of course. We used each to test for different things. I can tell you all about it another time, but the cloak only cloaks us from the alarms for ten minutes at a time.”

“That cooldown isn’t minutes, is it?” Harry stares at tiny 5 on the icon of his invisibility cloak.

“They’re days.”

Shit.

“So this cloak keeps the game from detecting us. Well, it does more than that but it doesn’t matter exactly, just know that you can only speak freely when you’re under its effect. You can cloak multiple people, we don’t know the limit, but the more people you put under it, the higher the risk of discovery. The wand—I don’t know what that does, to be quite honest. Ginny might know, but we’ve not really been able to speak.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers.

“It’s fine, none of us knew you had it and you had no reason to bring it up.”

“What did the wand used to do?”

“You apply it to your weapon of choice. Then, if your stats aren’t higher than your opponent’s, it elevates the stats on your weapon to match. Only works for an hour, and it used to be a one-time use, so save it for a very special occasion in case it still works like that. Now, the ring used to open up a special GM chat across the different region servers.”

“World servers?” Harry gaped.

“The chat closed after the beta and now we don’t have regions anymore, so it doesn’t matter. We don’t know how this one works. For all we know you might set off alarms using it.”

“But you said the game can’t detect us right now, shouldn’t I try it?”

Fawkes looks thoughtful. “Yeah, you know what, alright.”

Harry taps the item in his inventory, then taps ‘apply effect’. Immediately there’s a cooldown symbol that says one, which he takes to mean days just like the cloak.

_Error Code Null: No Effect Found!_

_Tap here to contact support._

  
  


Harry sighs, closing the error message with disappointment. “Error,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “No effect at all, apart from a day cooldown.”

“Figures,” Fawkes says.

Harry breathes deeply, because this is a lot to take in. 

Fawkes is a GM.

Was, he _was_ a GM, that’s no longer applicable, is it? Harry doesn’t think so, Fawkes and other rumoured GMs, because there have been a few, don’t seem to have any special powers, just extra knowledge that leeks and even beta players didn't know. Then there’s Ginny, who used to stream, and she knows a ton about the game as well.

The Deathly Hallows are… test items, brought in the game for… what purpose, exactly? Who put them in the game, was it the people from Hog’s Head going against Riddle Games Corp, moving behind their backs?

“I have so many questions,” Harry says slowly. “But the timer just ran out.”

Fawkes sighs. “It’ll be another day before the next run, no? That means you have plenty of time to think of all the questions you want to ask.”

Harry nods, still deep in thought, thinking of all the implications. 

“Orange,” Fawkes says, “you can’t talk about this with anyone, not even Ginny.”

“She knows?”

“She knows, yes,” the man confirms. “You-Know-Who listens to everyone. They have specific combinations that they listen for.”

“You-Know-Who isn’t one of those combinations?”

“They don’t know they need to listen to that, not that we know anyway. Just realise that you’re never truly alone.”

Sometimes, when someone tells you you’re not alone, that fact is supposed to be comforting, but here it just gives Harry the creeps. He shivers. H:CoS is even more of a hostile environment than he’d thought. He wonders if other people have realised that there are ears coded in, that nothing is sacred. You probably won’t even know you’re being listened to, Harry thinks morosely, any sense of privacy gone.

“Harry,” Fawkes murmurs.

It’s the first thing he’s ever used Harry’s real name. It’s shocking to hear it come from him, as if he’s addressing a stranger, as if that’s no longer him. Is he more Orange than Harry now? Where is the line, or are they the same person? He’s about to sink into a deeper spiral when he remembers Fawkes said his name.

“Hmm?”

And then Fawkes kisses him.

The kiss is as surprising as it is welcome. Harry leans into it before he knows what he’s doing, a moan rushing past his lips before he has a chance to stop it. He feels lightheaded, and he can’t even blame the lack of oxygen because the game doesn’t work that way. Fawkes is kissing him, and he can feel _all_ of it.

Fawkes licks Harry’s bottom lip and he opens his mouth to welcome the older man, their teeth clashing, “Oh,” and then there’s muffled laughter from both of them, Harry’s perhaps a tad more hysterical than Fawkes’.

“Fuck, of course you’re good at that too.”

Fawkes grins. “I’m good at many things.”

Harry cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah, you’re doing a great job of a humble impression right now,” he says sarcastically, heart still hammering in his throat. He spits out a feather.

Fawkes leans back and shakes his head, several other soft feathers unsticking themselves from Harry’s face. He reaches up to remove one of three golden feathers from his hair, and then they all disappear. All Fawkes has left is a singular feather sitting in the palm of his hand. He traces Harry’s lips with it, a small smile playing with his own.

“So that’s how your helmet works.”

Fawkes bites his bottom lip, and that shouldn’t look as hot as it does. He looks as playful as ever, and Harry wonders how he’s thirty-three. Aren’t they supposed to be adults? But then he remembers Fawkes in action as guild leader, and _that_ image pushes a sound of his throat that would have made him go red if he could’ve. 

“Oh?” Fawkes asks with interest.

“No, nothing,” Harry says quickly.

“Alright,” Fawkes agrees easily, and he leans in once more. He starts more gentle this time, guiding Harry into something that heats up fast. “Stay, Harry,” he whispers.

* * *

Unlocked: 60

Location: Heidel, Serendia

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

Birdsong LV. 62

RedNGold LV. 61

Rest is rudely interrupted by the loud tolling of a bell. That has never happened before, and Harry dreads what’s going to happen, shaking himself out of rest and rubbing his eyes. Surely this doesn’t bode well for any of them. For a moment, he’s distracted by Fawkes, who rolls over and clings closely to him. 

“What’s going on?” Fawkes groans into his pillow. “Make it _stop,_ I’m exhausted.”

But Harry is no longer amused, staring at the message in his inbox. “It’s an update, Fawkes,” he whispers, horrified.

  
  


_Dear adventurers,_

_A small update notice to keep you players from becoming bored with us!_

_Most of you must have noticed by now our belated gift for killing a level 50 basilisk._

_It simply took us a while to figure out what would be a proper gift, but we have figured it out!_

_As a reward for beating half the game, we’ve given you some of your humanity back, something we thought you might enjoy._

  
  


Fawkes is instantly awake. “Shit, _shit_.” He grabs the feather from the nightstand on his side of the bed and clips it into his hair, the feather instantly multiplying. Hastily he pulls on his armour, and then he’s out the door, except—“Wait, where is your cursor?” he asks, coming back into the room.

Harry breathes out slowly. “Yours is gone, too. There’s no emblem either.”

“ _Fuck_ , I need to go to Velia, figure out what’s going on. Are you coming with?”

“Later, I need to check on Sirius and Draco.”

“I understand,” Fawkes says, fixing his belt with another curse. “Go to Olvia when you can, stick to Ginny like glue.” And then he’s gone.

Harry scans the patch notes, taking his time putting his armour back on. He struggles a bit with the gauntlets, his hands shaking, because cursors are gone and so are the guild emblems. The implications of that are terrible—how are they going to know who is a red and who isn’t? How will they know who is safe to be around, how will they be able to make an informed decision about staying with someone? There’s a small note about an overall drop rate reduction, as well as EXP gain going down even further. 

As if it isn’t hard enough to level past fifty, he thinks bitterly.


	11. Episode 8

Unlocked: 60

Location: Velia, Balenos

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

RedNGold LV. 61

The next General Council meeting, as they call them, Harry attends is held in Velia this time around. It’s closest to Hogwarts the dungeon, and they’re using the Hogwarts’ guild house, the only one big enough in the regions that they’ve found that would house all of those interested in attending.

One of the first problems they run into is that they can’t verify if someone belongs there or not. There is no longer a brand marking someone as a player, and so they form queues per guild and are let in that way.

Harry gets separated from the others in his guild when Fawkes grabs him and positions him with Hedwig and Sirius apart from the crowd. With them sits another woman, with beautiful dark curls and a dark curl to her lips as well.

“Lestrange,” she introduces herself. “Lord Voldemort’s First Officer.” Her smirk widens when she spots Harry’s eyes flicker up to where her cursor would’ve been. “Ah, ah, _ah_ , no more of that, little Orange.”

Harry guiltily focuses on her face instead. “You know who I am?”

“I know who everyone is, it’s part of my job,” she says in a low voice, and then she giggles at his expression. “ _Oh_ , would you relax some, little Orange. We’re inside town borders, you’re safe _here_.”

Harry decides he doesn’t like her, instinct and common sense screaming at him. She’s definitely a red, not just because she’s Lord Voldemort’s First Officer.

Hedwig’s eye twitches, but she turns towards the boy Harry recognises from the last time he was here, the one who treats the Hogwarts guild like royalty. Creevey or something. 

Creevey looks shyly at Hedwig. “The crystals are set, ma’am.”

“Awesome,” she tells the boy. “Will you sit with us?”

Sirius lightly elbows her. “Hedwig, I _swear_ to god.”

“He needs to sit somewhere, doesn’t he? He’s doing the crystals today.”

“What happened to the other kid?” Sirius asks.

Lestrange grins. “Went somewhere he shouldn’t have gone and now he’s blue.”

Sirius and Harry share a dark look.

* * *

Harry takes a double take when Ginny joins them in their corner, wrapped in a soft, red cloak, her face hidden under a large hood. She pauses before Lestrange, but then nods and goes to sit between Hedwig and Sirius. Was she at the previous meeting too, and Harry just hadn’t recognised her due to the cloak? He hadn’t paid attention to the mini-map, because it had gone a bit wild with the amount of people there at the same time, but maybe he would’ve seen guild member dots.

“I’m part of the Order network, Harry, I’m at most of these,” Ginny says faux-haughtily by way of explanation. “But no, I wasn’t at the other one, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

* * *

The previous meeting was different in that it was less focused, more panicked, like time was running out. Now it’s like players feel resigned, getting ready for a war of some kind. There’s distrust as well, their brands gone.

Not unlike the other one Harry attended, this meeting drags on and on as well. Every half hour Creevey interrupts with a loud, “Wait!” because the recording crystal ran out of minutes. Creevey seems to delight in being able to interrupt so many people, and they all wait for him to set up another one.

“Part six of the General Council meeting, you may continue.”

Ginny, who was talking about material shortage, flawlessly continues her train of thought. She’s reading off of a paper with streaks of coal in her lap in between. She really _has_ been at these things before, Harry thinks fondly. It isn’t that he doubted her, but it’s strange that there is now a large part of her life that he doesn’t know about.

They used to be all up in each other’s business.

* * *

They stop around sunset and collectively decide to come back tomorrow at noon, when hopefully the recording crystals have been transcribed and copied for everyone. Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort and Fawkes all retreat to a different room, so Harry takes the liberty of breaking into Fawkes’ office and lounging in his desk chair.

Hedwig and Sirius sit on the two chairs on the other side of the desk while Ginny walks around the room and picks up all sorts of decorative items, inspecting them curiously. Clearly she’s never had free reign here before.

“Well that was an utter waste,” Hedwig says, rubbing her brow with a sigh. “Nothing was said that hasn’t been said before.”

Sirius groans and goes slack in his chair. “I fucking hate those meetings.”

“Oh please, you barely attend them,” Hedwig laughs.

“I’ve gone to plenty of them.”

“You _used_ to.”

“I got bored of them.” Sirius grins.

“No shit,” Hedwig chuckles.

“I like them,” Ginny says in the silence that follows. “I don’t get to see people very often, and it’s as good an excuse as any.” She smiles at them, and it’s true that she seems invigorated rather than mentally exhausted and slow like the rest of them.

A soft knock interrupts whatever it is that Sirius wanted to say, and it’s Creevey, coming to drop off the crystals. “Hi,” he says timidly, depositing the crystals on the desk. “I don’t know where to bring them, so I thought I’d put them here.”

“Hi Colin,” Hedwig says tiredly and she does a remarkable job of not snapping at the source of the invasion of their peace. 

It’s not the kid’s fault, Harry knows that, but he’s still annoyed.

“Oh, it’s so pretty, look!” Ginny says then, holding up a diadem. It sparkles in the candlelight, and indeed it is very pretty. She throws her hood down and puts the diadem on, checking herself in a small wall mirror near the door. She turns to the room and curtsies with a giggle. “I want it, I’m going to ask Fawkes for it.”

Creevey squints at Ginny, seemingly recognising her. “You used to stream, right?”

And _Ginny—_

Ginny is still distracted.

“Oh, yeah, I’m still con—” 

She gasps at her own words, standing up ramrod straight. She pales, looking terrified. “Nevermind, I-I-I don’t know w-why I said that,” she stammers. She takes a deep, unsteady breath, her hand feeling behind her so she can lean on a desk. “Hedwig? _Shit_.”

“Shoo!” Sirius barks at Creevey, who doesn’t know what’s going on either but can see that there’s something wrong. The boy squeaks and runs.

“It’s going to be fine,” Hedwig says slowly, darkly, pulling the girl close.

They wait tensely for something to happen.

But nothing does, and slowly they relax.

* * *

Unlocked: 60

Location: Kusha, Mediah

Server: Serendia 4

**Party**

Nightmare LV. 61

RedNGold LV. 61

They’re on their way back from Sausans, or Sausages as players call them, when they get the message from Dumbledore.

**From User: Bumble Bee**

_There has been a development._

_Please come to the Hogwarts Guild House in Velia, Serendia 4 at your earliest convenience._

~Albus Dumbledore, Order of the Phoenix

“Did you get that too?” Harry asks. “From Dumbledore, I mean?”

“Hmm? Yes, I did,” Sirius says, distracted, clearly still reading. “He says it’s something to do with the castle. Have you ever been?”

“No,” Harry answers as they finalise their trades with the NPCs. “Ready?”

* * *

Ron is pacing in front of the guild house when they arrive in Velia. “Harry!” he shouts loudly, despite the short distance between them. He rushes down the stairs to where Harry is dismounting his horse, clearly very worked up. “It’s Gin,” he says.

“What about Gin?” Harry asks with alarm in his voice, mind flashing back to two days ago.

“She’s gone,” Ron bites out. “Disappeared in the middle of the night, Hermione says she never saw Ginny leave or anything, but—she’s gone, Harry.”

“Let’s just go inside first,” Sirius says calmly.

“You don’t get it,” Ron snaps, “that’s my sister.”

“I do get that, Ron, but standing here isn’t going to accomplish anything. C’mon.”

* * *

Velia was just the meeting place, however, because right when Harry and Sirius enter the guild house, they run into Lord Voldemort. Sirius looks unhappy about this, and Harry, well he doesn’t really know the man, so he just nods in greeting.

“They went ahead, they’re at the castle,” Voldemort says.

* * *

_Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever._

They got to her anyway.

* * *

Harry’s mouth feels dry and his eyes burn. “What are we going to do?” he asks as soon as they’ve found Dumbledore and Fawkes. “What does the message mean?”

“Excuse me, I’m going to find Moody and get the teams ready,” Sirius says, and then he’s gone in the crowd.

It seems they’ve called all front liners together, and Harry, who has never been to a raid before, realises they’re about to do one. The few times he’d _wanted_ to join, as opposed to firmly ignoring their existence, Fawkes had been insistent on him staying behind.

Fawkes whistles on his fingers. “Diggory!” he calls.

The call gets repeated a few times in the crowd, a game of telephone, until finally a young man finds his way to them and stands in front of them. “Sir?”

Harry withholds a smile.

A woman and another man join the first man. “Sir,” they greet the guild leaders in tandem.

“You’re always the best team for introducing a newbie, and I have one for you.” Fawkes isn’t returning their smile, utterly serious. “He dies and I will personally see to it that you follow him in death.”

“No pressure, got it,” the woman says sharply, with a strong French accent. “Delacour,” she introduces herself, holding out her hand.

Harry takes her hand, and her handshake is strong. He likes her already. “I go by Orange,” he answers her greeting.

The second man introduces himself as Krum, and suddenly Harry has a team. They whirl him away to get him “prepped” whatever that means, and then he finds himself standing on a staircase in the middle of Hogwarts. Around them there are mobs, but they are mere nuisances, taken care of by the mobline.

The castle is beautiful, and Harry feels bad for not coming to her sooner to check her out. He’s high enough level that walking around, even with the mobs, shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe he can do so later, maybe his new team would be willing to show him around, as they seem comfortable here.

“We go in waves,” Delacour explains. “We’re in the third wave. Did you bring pots?”

Harry double-checks his inventory for potions. “Yes, we went by a—” 

“Good,” Diggory interrupts and Harry doesn’t have it in himself to be irritated. “In between turns you chug those things like a madman, got it? If you’re able to use a potion, you use it, end of story, or it’ll _be_ the end of your story.”

“We attack from the left, which means after we got our attacks in, we go left of the chamber and follow the wall to get back in the line,” Krum says. “Stick to us and you are fine.”

“Got it.”

* * *

Hermione finds them while they wait for everyone to get into place. “She’s not in the main chamber,” she tells him over the loud noise. “They already checked.”

* * *

But now that Harry knows Ginny isn’t in the main chamber, he doesn’t want to stick to his team, he wants to go find her, wants to explore. Nobody ever talks about other bosses in here, he’s pretty sure there are none, just the annoying mobs that are easily taken care of.

“Listen,” Harry says, “are they really going to notice us leaving?”

“If everyone thinks that way, then yes, they will,” Diggory says immediately.

Harry, however, will fight for this. “I’m going to look for Ginny.”

“No, you’re going to help us with the basilisk, then we look for her,” Delacour commands.

“No.”

“Yes,” she snaps.

“No, I’m going to look for Ginny while everyone’s busy with the basilisk. The mob line is keeping the hallways clear, it should be fine.”

“Goddamnit,” Diggory mutters.

* * *

They split up, Delacour and Krum going one way while Diggory and Harry go the other way. “She’s probably in one of the side rooms,” Diggory says, resigned but accepting of their fate, whatever that fate is going to be. “They already checked all of Hogwarts above ground and most of the dungeons.”

“Most, but not all,” Harry says pointedly.

“Krum is taking Delacour there now, he knows that area better.”

Harry falls silent again, follows the other man. Perhaps this hadn’t been such a good idea after all, but it’s too late to back out now. 

The Chamber of Secrets is a maze of tunnels, the main room being the largest and where the basilisk is summoned for a raid. The first few rooms they find are much like the main room, except smaller and sometimes without that thin layer of water covering the floor. 

It’s the fifth one they enter when there is a green flash of _something._

Diggory falls and goes blue before he’s even hit the stone floor.

Lord Voldemort’s eyes light up. “Ah, the chosen one.”

“What _was_ that?” Harry asks as he cautiously enters the room. Voldemort is unharmed, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing dangerous left in the room, no traps that could be set off by stepping on the wrong tile.

He spots her laying still in a corner.

“Ginny!”

“Don’t bother, she’s not going to wake up,” Voldemort says from the other side of the damp room. He steps further into the light, and there’s something sinister about the way his mouth is set. “Not now, not ever.”

Ginny’s eyes are open, like she’s merely stunned and waiting out the timer. She’s not breathing, but that’s not necessary in H:CoS, it doesn’t _mean_ anything. 

“You found her? Why didn’t you take her back outside?” Harry asks, trying to get his arms under her, but her wet robes make her slippery and the last thing he wants to do is drop her.

Voldemort chuckles. “Oh, _Harry_.”

A chill runs down his spine. “What?”

“Have you not figured it out yet, boy?”

It dawns on him as he’s bent over Ginny, and he swears he can feel his heart skip a beat. In the corner of his eye he sees his inventory button, and— _admin items,_ they’re admin items. “You’re a GM,” Harry says shakily.

  
  


_Continuing will apply the Elder buff to your Glaive [+20]._

_Do you wish to continue?_

  
  


Hiding his confirmation shortcut under the guise of picking Ginny up, he spots the glaive in his inventory starting to glow.

“Not quite,” Voldemort says. He waves his hand around, and letters appear in the air between them.

  
  


_I AM LORD VOLDEMORT_

  
  


Harry watches in horror as the letters rearrange themselves.

  
  


_TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE_

  
  


“ _You_ are Tom Riddle,” he whispers, and for a second there he doesn’t know what else there is to say to that, how to express himself. “You—you own the— _you_ did this?”

Voldemort— _Riddle_ slow-claps. “Well done, boy,” he sneers.

And Harry is panicking.

A villain telling their hero what they’ve been up to usually doesn’t mean well for the hero, let alone their prey. Harry’s not stupid, he knows who has all the power here.

The cloak—what can he do with the cloak?

“Do you know the lore, Harry? Do you know about the four houses of Hogwarts?”

Harry gulps, but Voldemort is turned towards a human statue in the room. Quickly, as quietly as he can, he drapes the invisibility cloak over Ginny but he doesn’t activate it yet. “Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw.”

“Yes, your little friend was quick to claim those names,” Voldemort says. “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”

At first nothing happens, but then the statue moves to the side and a basilisk slithers out. It’s not as large as the one in the main room, but it’s nothing to scoff at either, as deadly as its sibling or cousin or whatever it is they are.

“I’ve been assured it doesn’t hurt,” Voldemort says.

It’s now or never. The cloak has a use, so does the wand, what about the ring?

There _has_ to be something to it.

He activates the Ring of Resurrection, hoping for a fucking miracle.

_Error Code Null: No Effect Found!_

_Tap here to contact support._

  
  


“What are—”

Harry slams his palm down on the textbox and everything freezes, including Riddle, including the basilisk poised to strike, including Harry for just a moment. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to happen, but within one blink and the next he’s suddenly laying down in a bed, staring up at a ceiling. He’s breathing hard and his chest burns.

“Now, Amelia!”

“Harry, can you hear me?” 

Harry wheezes in response and he claws at his throat, 

“Harry, I know you’re confused right now. I’m detective Amelia Bones,” a woman’s voice says. Whoever it is speaks very fast, but Harry can’t see anything other than the ceiling. “You need to trust me and do what I say, do you understand?”

His eyes are tearing up, and that’s not right, he can’t get air, he doesn’t need air, whatever this room is, he won’t fall for it, he never should’ve tried to mess with admin items. Fuck Riddle and his games, fuck all of it.

“Sweetheart, you need to listen to Amelia,” another NPC says.

“You must destroy Ginny’s book.”

“Ginny,” Harry croaks, “No, you sick bastard.” He struggles to sit upright, but several NPCs hold him back down and there’s a frantic beeping in the background and his chest is on _fire_. “Lemme go!”

“He doesn’t—”

“Let her do—”

“Stand aside, please, ma’am.”

“No, that’s my baby. You can’t make him go back, you can’t!”

“Ma’am, stand aside.”

The first woman grasps his hand, and her grip hurts. Harry blinks at her, and her mouth is moving, and she keeps repeating the same thing over and over. “Destroy her book, Harry.” 

“Mrs. Potter, please move, I won’t ask again.”

“Harry? Can you do that for me? Destroy Ginny’s book, you must—”

A woman screams and for a few seconds he can’t see anything but error messages.

“—you doing, you stupid boy?” Riddle snarls.

Harry gasps for air he doesn’t need, the confirmation box closing automatically. “I didn’t do anything,” he snaps back, rubbing his throat, raising his glaive with shaking hands. “You sick _bastard_.” He won’t let Ginny go blue on him, and he won’t let these mind games get to him either. 

The basilisk is a lot bigger than he expects when he finally gets a good look at it., and with a curse he manages to dodge just in time. He runs to the other side, then activates the invisibility cloak, trying to get the basilisk away from Ginny, who is still lying stunned underneath the cloak.

Harry is more than glad for the elder buff when he successfully manages to get an attack of his own in and it actually does damage, hitting one of the basilisk’s eyes and causing blindness that will likely last a minute or so, but mostly he spends his time dodging. The basilisk gets him in the arm, which makes handling his weapon a lot harder, but he manages.

Suddenly there’s Hedwig, flying into the room at breakneck speed he didn’t know she was capable of. Both Harry and Riddle look up, and the basilisk pauses, waits for further instructions from its master, proving that it’s nothing more than a puppet, a weapon wielded by Riddle. Why the man isn’t fighting Harry with an actual weapon, he can’t begin to guess, but at least Harry has the Elder buff running for another forty-five minutes.

“The _book_ , Harry!” Hedwig shouts.

The book. 

_“What’s this, then?”_

_“All the dirty little secrets.”_

  
  


Once upon a time, Ginny had called it a manual, had called it insight into the mind of a killer, had said it held all the dirty little secrets. 

He looks down, finds himself standing right in front of it and— 

Riddle snarls wordlessly, his expression twisted.

—pierces it with the sharp tip of his glaive.

Riddle’s snarl turns into a shout and a scream. 

Hedwig drops to her knees with a gasp and the basilisk crashes into the wall behind her.

Her body glows baby blue.

Then she disappears, there one moment and gone the next, as if she was never there at all.

  
  
 _Error 74: Username_ Brainy Bird _will no longer appear in your friends list._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearing the end! Just the epilogue left now. Hope you enjoyed the ride so far.


	12. Episode 8.5

Unlocked: ??

Location: ??

Server: ??

The bed dips. 

Harry slowly opens his eyes, groans and raises a hand against the sunlight streaming in from the open window, the curtains waving softly. The weather outside is outstanding, he can feel it from the warm breeze that comes into his room.

“Harry?”

Harry’s breath hitches, and he sits up finally. “Where’ve you been?” he croaks, his throat sore; he can still feel the tube he woke up with stuck in his throat, clawing at his body in a panic as awareness came back to him. He’s sure he’s not the only one either.

Fawkes clears his throat. They’ve been here for less than a month and it’s still odd to see him in anything but his red feathered suit. Instead he’s wearing jeans and a sweater vest over a dress shirt, because of course that was the way he dressed. Harry should’ve known the man was a snob, honestly, yet it still took him by surprise when he’d initially turned his nose up at Harry’s clothes; sweatpants and a T-shirt.

He wonders what the clothes are based on. 

They must have a lot of information on the players left, like the clothes they were wearing when they initially entered the game. Information on their loved ones, to make NPCs match. Riddle played dirty, that was for sure, prepared them for this moment for months on end. 

Messing with their heads this way was a rather low blow, but it must’ve some sort of entertainment value that they kept at it anyway, a hospital setting now instead of the widespread lands of H:CoS. Was this the real Chamber of Secrets?

“Harry,” Fawkes says again.

“Hmm?”

“Your godfather woke up.”

Harry’s eyes widen of their own accord. “Oh,” he whispers. 

“They’re not letting us in,” Fawkes says bitterly, because even though he still dislikes Sirius, there is no place for that here, not yet anyway, maybe when they’ve settled.

“He’s going to wake up alone?”

“Of course he is.”

* * *

Two months in and nothing has changed.

The restaurant is a large open space. Harry hates it, and about this too he knows he’s not the only one. He sees the paranoid glances as he shuffles past tables, spotting players he knows, spotting non-players he’s never seen before. It’s a building specifically erected for them, but it’s only been a year, and the building is massive—Harry doesn’t believe it.

Harry doesn’t believe anything.

He stops at his customary table, the best one in the hospital restaurant because it overlooks the expansive gardens. They would’ve been impressive had this been real, but this is a game and compared to H:CoS, these are nothing. Often he wonders if this part of the game had always been in, or if they added it later. It certainly seems real enough, as if their NerveGear has learned all it could from them.

Ginny’s already sitting at their table, along with Sirius, Ron and Fawkes. Hermione’s in the bathroom but on her way and so is Draco. Ginny bounces her leg restlessly, which has been pretty much a constant ever since she got disconnected during the Final Battle as they call it. She talks about it openly now that Riddle’s company knows, because there’s no extra threat now that her connection is gone.

Sirius is of the opinion that they should make the most out of it. Try to live life like they’re truly free, enjoy the presence of their loved ones even though they’re NPCs. It’s not something they dare to say in front of said NPCs, because there must be some trigger words that they can’t quite figure out yet and the NPCs cry now.

It’s more than a little disconcerting.

The nurse-NPCs leave them mostly alone nowadays. Harry’s not even sure why they’re being kept in the hospital since they’re fine now, but they aren’t allowed to leave yet, which only adds to the belief that this has to be a trick. “They probably only have the hospital and the gardens worked out for now, they’re still working on the rest,” Hermione speculated once, and everyone agreed.

Hedwig sits at their table as well.

When Hermione and Draco have finally joined, they all tuck into their food. It’s a little scary to have no HP bar, their entire HUD taken away now, not even a small logo etched in the bottom right corner of their vision. It’s scary that it’s truly realistic now, even more than when Riddle turned up their senses near the end of the previous part.

“What would it have taken for you to believe it?” Hermione asks their table.

“If we’d woken up with the helmets on, probably,” Ron answers. “That’d be a lot more realistic than waking up without them, that’s for sure.”

They all agree. 

“If they let us out of here,” Hermione says. “They keep us here and then we’re supposed to believe there’s a whole world out there. How are we supposed to _know_ that?”

“And if the nurses didn’t all say the same thing,” Ginny adds. “It’s a little tiring hearing them all say in the exact same way that it’s real.”

For Harry the answer is different. “Hedwig,” he says, and the woman looks pained, but well—”I _saw_ her go blue.”

“I think we should all play along,” Sirius reiterates, because they all ignore Harry when it comes to Hedwig dying, they’re just that deep in denial. “If they truly have more than just this place, then surely they’ll let us out if we do what they want.”

“What _do_ they want?” Fawkes asks. 

“See, if I still had chat, I would’ve known already,” Ginny says bitterly.

“Spilt milk,” Ron sighs.

“Piss off.”

Harry grins at Ron as leans into Sirius; perhaps it’s not so bad going from one environment to the next if he has his family with him.

* * *

So Harry plays along, they all do.

They play along _well_.

* * *

_you can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world._

_but it takes people to make the dream a reality._

\- walt disney.

  
  


~fin.

**Author's Note:**

> 3 March 2021: This is it, we made it to the end! I never meant for the end to be super ambiguous (as some of you know, I can be a lot more vague in my fics than I was here). It's pretty obvious what's going on there at the end, it was just supposed to be... tragic and messed up. There are things I would've done differently, the ending was rushed, but I was so tired of the fic by then that I didn't want to rewrite it, so here it is.
> 
> Fun fact #1: This used to be a Hockey RPF fic that I started for a friend *sweats nervously*. About 1/3rd was written, I think right before Fawkes shows up in fact, before I switched it to Harry Potter, which is more my jam than RPF will ever be.
> 
> Fun fact #2: The rest of the fic was written while listening to Butterfly by Crazy Town. Yes, you read that right 😂 Idek...
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for giving the fic a chance!  
> Take care and I hope you have a beautiful day. 💖


End file.
